


Todd and Téa - Field of Play

by Tessaray



Category: One Life to Live
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:06:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 77,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5077144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tessaray/pseuds/Tessaray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Téa was so desperate for a divorce that she was willing to provoke Todd into a public display of violence. But it's what happens in private that really matters.</p><p>Vintage Todd and Téa, 1998. Inspired by the YouTube video of Téa's cruel seduction of Todd at the Palace Bar, entitled OLTL Todd & Téa 1998 part 58..</p><p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koNHf9_1IXk&index=58&list=PL49C2D0650876B28A</p><p>Amazing story, amazing performances. Go. Watch. Now. I'll wait....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Téa can see Andrew's arms around her, trying to comfort her, but she can barely feel them. She desperately wishes she could—it would make her life so simple—but they're not solid enough, not nearly as  _real_  as she needs them to be...

Todd was real. He's the one she still feels through her fading adrenaline rush, sneering his hot breath and cold malice into her face, his hand gripping her hair...

_If I ever throw you out of a window, there won't be anyone around to watch..._

They'd been surrounded by people downstairs in the Palace Bar, but so utterly alone... just the two of them, Todd and Téa, striking and dodging, reaching and betraying... a few more moves in their twisted game.

And she'd instigated it. She'd been the one to provoke his quiet, ruthless violence. But she doesn't want to think about that... she wants to hide here in her hotel room. It should be just  _them_  now, Téa and Andrew, deepening this fledging romance of theirs, uniting against the enemy... but Todd refuses to play his role, and even now he's here in spirit, muscling them apart...

Because she knows she hurt him.

_Our marriage was a joke because you were never MAN enough to make it real..._

She presses her cheek into Andrew's insubstantial shoulder, tries to shut out the vivid memory of Todd's eyes, the sudden shift from open vulnerability to confusion... to pain.

"I won't let him hurt you," Andrew says, seeing only what he wants to see in the late afternoon light, only what he'll allow himself to see.

He'll never understand. And she can't be bothered to make him.

Téa's plan had been straightforward... provoke Todd into physically attacking her in public so a judge would grant her a divorce. There was no other way... he had been stubbornly, inexplicably hanging onto her and to this carcass of a marriage, prolonging the agony for both of them. She had to end it, and after nine months of of close observation she knew him, knew which buttons to push... but she wasn't at all sure he'd let down his guard enough for her to reach them.

She chose the location carefully... a place where they were known, plenty of people, plenty of  _witnesses_... but they all faded as Téa set her plan in motion... her  _seduction_. It should have seemed futile, given all the times she'd tried in earnest and failed miserably, but it also seemed like the obvious choice, to hit him in the spot he was most vulnerable... and that spot was sex. He wanted her back—for whatever obscure reason, he was obsessed with it—and maybe so desperate to hang onto her that he would finally allow her into his bed. So she'd tapped into their complex language of desire and denial, set the tone—all smoky voice and moist eyes—and just stopped fighting. And somehow... he took the bait.

She reeled him in carefully, slowly, bracing for a sudden fight, expecting it... not expecting his eyes to soften and mist over so quickly, not expecting the clouds to part, the walls to crumble into dust at her feet like an offering. She realized then why it was so effortless and why she'd begun to feel so awful—he was lonely, and he wanted to trust her. This damaged man, who trusted no one, was allowing himself to be as vulnerable with her as she'd been with him, the night she'd dropped her robe at her feet and stood before him, naked, offering herself... afraid, but full of hope and yearning...

And he'd thrown her out into a blizzard. Humiliated her. Wrecked her.

 _Fuck_   _him_.

The attorney in her saw the opening—it was the brief moment that he'd hesitated after her...  _proposition_. And she'd struck... with glee, with triumph.

When he'd rejected her all those weeks ago, he'd only struck at her ego.

Today, she struck something much deeper... and she's only now realizing it.

_Our marriage was a joke because you were never MAN enough to make it real..._

Andrew mistakes her groan of regret for one of lingering fear and pulls her closer, making cooing noises that annoy the hell out of her. Still, she allows it, pushes deeper into his embrace, wills herself to feel it, to feel anything for him other than benign tolerance.

She had to do it. All of it. She has to get away from Todd and out of this marriage, get away from his chaos and cruelty before she's nothing more than dirt under his heel. She has to... whatever the cost. And Andrew is the light and the way, the string to follow out of the labyrinth...

If only Andrew could make her  _feel_...

Andrew is startled by a sharp knock on the door.

Téa isn't.

"Hey, Delgado!"

Téa sighs and shrugs out of Andrew's embrace.

"Don't," he says when she turns to the door.

"He won't go away, Andrew."

"Then let me." He strides past her and flings open the door to Todd, whose fist is raised sideways for more pounding. He glares at Andrew, unclenches, re-clenches his fist.

"Well, well, well, Reverend Andy." He looks past Andrew to Téa, standing defiant in the middle of the room. "Got something that needs confessing, Delgado?"

"You're not welcome here, Todd," Andrew says evenly.

Todd takes a long-legged stride toward Téa, Andrew blocks his way. Todd keeps his eyes locked on his wife.

"He talks for you now, Delgado?"

She lifts her chin. "We don't have anything to say to each other, Todd."

"Yeah, well I have a question, and I don't think you want me to ask it in front of preacher man."

Todd is a solid force, belligerent as always, dapper in his three-piece suit, but she knows it's a veneer. What's going on beneath is less obvious.

"Téa and I have no secrets from one another, Todd."

Her eyes begin to roll, but she forces herself to let Andrew's statement stand.

"That right, Delgado? So... Reverend Andy knows what you were up to in the bar just now?"

_You know I'm very attracted to you. We could go up to my room, shut out the rest of the world and just be together. I'm sure we could find a way to... communicate..._

She shrugs off the memory of Todd's response... his soft gasp, full lips parting...

"What do you want, Todd?"

"I want to have a private conversation with my wife. You are still my wife—"

"God help her," Andrew huffs.

"Look, you stay the hell out of it! Don't you have holy crackers to bake or something?"

"Todd... Andrew... look, Andrew, just... give us a minute, okay? He won't leave until—"

"Then you leave, Téa," Andrew says, stretching out his arms to her. "Leave with me."

"Andrew, I'll be fine, really." She takes his hands, tugs him toward the door. As Todd's face slides into a triumphant sneer, Téa lowers her voice. "Just wait for me downstairs."

"No. I will be right outside this door, in case—"

"—Riiiight, 'cuz that wouldn't look bad at all to your flock, you on your knees peeking through keyholes..."

"Shut up, Todd. Andrew, just wait for me in the bar."

"Téa, I don't like this."

"I know," she says, guiding him into the hallway. "But I'll be fine, really."

"Téa—"

She steps back into the room, closes the door firmly on Andrew's scowling face.

Todd rocks back, grinning. "Scrappy little dickens, isn't he?"

"What do you want, Todd?"

His grin fades and he looks at her hard, hard enough that she can see the echo of malice, the threat of violence, can feel the strength of his hand twisting in her hair.

_You know why you'll never leave me? What you just did... we belong together..._

She stifles an impulse to run after Andrew.

"We have some unfinished business, Delgado."

"No, we don't, Todd. Not unless you're here to give me my divorce." She crosses her arms tightly over her chest. "I'm not interested in a trial reconciliation. I'm not coming back. Not for four weeks, not for four seconds. I'm done."

"Yeah, well, there's just one little thing."

"And what's that?"

"You're not done. Not by a long shot."

She forces a laugh. "Because of before?"

"Yeah, because of before."

"Todd, I was  _playing_  you," she says, ignoring a fresh pang of guilt.

He pauses, studies her face, his tongue moving behind his upper lip in that way he does when he's on edge. She has an impression of inner conflict, like he wants to retreat... and she fervently hopes he does. But he takes a step toward her.

"You almost had me convinced, Delgado. Maybe you had yourself convinced. But I know that look—you weren't faking."

"What look?"

"That soft, sultry, _Todd, I want you_  look."

She feels her heart leap like she's been caught stealing, but she juts out her chin. "That's called  _acting_."

He shakes his head, moves another half step toward her, not quite committed yet, still testing the waters.

"No. That's called a Hail Mary pass. It's a play you run—"

"—I know what it is—"

"—when you've got nothing left to lose... and if it works, you can win the whole ballgame. You've got nothing left to lose, Delgado."

"Oh, I've got plenty left to lose, Todd," she says, surging forward, getting in his face. "Like the rest of my dignity, my self-respect, Andrew..."

He shakes off the name with a sneer.

"Okay, fine, so either way you win, right," he says. "Either you provoke me into having this big public meltdown and a judge grants you an easy divorce so you can ride off with  _Andrew_ , or you seduce me and get what you've been after all along. Win for you, win for you."

She starts a sneer of her own, but pulls it back as she realizes that... he's right. What would she have done if he hadn't hesitated downstairs? She hadn't allowed herself to consciously consider the possibility... thank God she'll never have to know. A quick calculation tells her she has nothing to lose by admitting it.

"Hmm. Good plan."

He halts, looks startled. "You're not denying it?"

"There's little point. You seem to have me all figured out. In fact, you figured me out before any...  _damage_  was done, to either of us. So, looks like I didn't win down there after all." She cocks her head at him. "You beat me Todd. So what more do you want?"

He hauls in a deep breath, slumps, eyes sweeping the floor before they find their way back to her. He seems so lost, knocked off his pins...

"Whatever." He chews his lip a moment. "Just so we're clear, though, I had you pegged from the get-go. I was playing you right back. Just wanted to see how far you'd take it."

" _Bull_ , Todd! You were practically salivating in your beer."

"Oh, right, Delgado, like you're all that."

She dips her chin, lowers her voice an octave and says softly, "You thought so a few minutes ago."

He hunches up, folds his arms over his chest, grumbles. "Yeah, well... whatever."

It's her turn to be startled... and a little thrilled that he doesn't deny it. Why bother... they both know the truth. Still, she can't help but soften toward him when he's all awkward like this. Always wanting to help him, when it comes right down to it. It's what she does.

"What are you doing here, Todd?" she says gently. "Why can't you just let it go? Let  _me_  go?"

He raises his eyes... gaze dark, unfocused. He opens his mouth, then clamps it shut and swings toward the door. He stops dead with his back to her, long golden-brown hair settling in waves around his shoulders.

"Okay. Okay, Delgado. Maybe—and I'm not saying you did—but maybe, if you got to me a little, it wouldn't have been... so bad." He shifts his weight, deepens his hunch. "The way you were talking... maybe I was ready for it to... go... somewhere, you know?"

She's watching him cautiously, barely breathing.

"What are you saying—"

"But then you—" He swallows hard, forces his words out in a rush. "Maybe if you hadn't kicked me in the teeth when I put the brakes on, maybe... maybe we'd be in that bed right now. And that would be—,"

She sways, suddenly lightheaded.

"That would be what, Todd?"

He turns to face her. His gaze moves up her body slowly, openly, generating heat that forces a little whimper from her throat. HIs eyes reach hers and lock in, a question forming there... but he suddenly deflates, rakes a hand through his hair.

"Jesus... stupid, stupid. I... forget it, Delgado," he bites out, shaking his head. "I'm an idiot. Yeah, you were playing me. All we do is play. I gotta..."

He rushes toward the door, but she stops him with a steely hand on his arm.

"Todd—"

He stiffens, jaw working, nostrils flaring... but he stays where he is, lets her touch him.

"Todd, look at me."

He stares hard at someplace she can't see.

Her grip on his arm tightens. "Has something changed? Because you need to tell me, right now, if—"

"If what? I was a jerk to come up here, Delgado."

"Why did you come?"

He makes a frustrated sound and pulls away from her.

"Look, you want your divorce? Fine, you got it. I won't stand in your way."

In two strides his hand is on the doorknob, but she intercepts him, spins him, pushes him back against the door, lifts a hand and jabs a finger in his face.

"You," she says, her voice thick, quivering with rising, frustrated emotion. "Are gonna talk to me, now!"

He looks down at her long and hard, scanning her face... until gradually his mouth curves into a grin. He chuckles lightly, leans in, takes her accusing fingertip between his teeth and gives it a quick bite.

"I knew you were full of shit, Delgado."

She pulls back sharply... wary, confused.

He laughs again, keeps laughing, all angst and turmoil gone, sloughed away like dead skin. "I offer you a divorce, the thing you say you want, and you  _still_  can't let me go... not if there's the slightest chance of getting me in the sack."

She wheels away from him, sputtering. "I can't let  _you_  go?! God, you—," she casts around for something to call him, nothing in English suffices.  _"Cabrón! Pendejo!"_

"Don't be so surprised. I called it, didn't I? I said all we do is play. It's my turn now."

"So you—so—,"

"Take a breath, Delgado."

"So none of that was true... about me  _getting to you_?"

He ignores the question, rolls his eyes toward the door behind him. "You gettin' all this, Rev?" he calls over his shoulder, makes a show of sniffing. "He's still out there, you know. I can smell the moral rectitude from here."

A muffled voice comes from the other side of the door. "Manning, if you touch her—,"

Téa lets loose an outraged cry, shoves Todd aside and throws the door open.

"I told you to wait downstairs!" she yells at a taken-aback, wide-eyed Andrew.

"Téa, can't you see, he—he's not—," he stammers.

"Go!" she shouts, then eases at his kicked-puppy face. "Please, Andrew, this is between me and Todd. I'm fine. I'll be down in a bit, okay?"

Over Téa's head, a very self-satisfied Todd wiggles his fingers in the air. "See ya, Rev."

Andrew glares murder at him, draws and releases a deep breath, turns and fixes his eyes on Téa. He studies her until she has to look away. "I hope you know what you're doing," he says. He doesn't wait for an answer, just pivots, stalks off down the hall and jabs the elevator button.

Téa stares after him, unseeing. She's taking time to steady herself... aware of the flush of heat in her body, the sweet buzz between her legs. Todd did that, the idea of being with him did that. Well, at least now she knows what she would have done if he hadn't hesitated downstairs...

_We'd be in that bed right now..._

He's behind her... close, but never close enough. Never far enough away, either.

The elevator arrives and she feels a curious moment of panic as Andrew steps on without looking back. And in the beat before the door slides closed, Téa imagines following him, imagines the freedom, the peace, of just walking away from... feeling. Feeling too damn much. She closes the door, rests her forehead on the cool wood.

"Wipe that smirk off your face, Todd," she says, without needing to look at him.

"Thought he'd never leave. Geez, he acts like you're in the clutches of Satan himself," Todd says from across the room. He's won, so no more need to loom, to assert himself, defend his territory. She wouldn't be surprised to turn and find him flung on the sofa, making himself at home.

And so he is.

"Why do you have to antagonize him?" she says tiredly.

" _Me_  antagonize  _him_? What're you, nuts?" he says lightly, unconcerned, just playing the game. "He's trying to nail my wife, for God's sake! And he treats you like a two-year-old, Delgado. That can't do much for your so-called dignity and self-respect."

"He's a good friend, Todd," she says, sinking back wearily against the door. She knows it's pointless to explain normal human emotions to him, but what the hell. "He cares about me. He knows that I don't always act in my own best interests when it comes to... this situation."

"No?" he says, kicking off his shoes and shoving a pillow behind his back. "So... whose best interests do you act in?"

She clears her throat, digs beneath the obvious truthful answer for one more palatable to herself. "Starr's, of course. As her step-mother, I—"

"Liar," he says.

She flares at him, opens her mouth to speak but he interrupts.

"Come on, Delgado. Tell the truth... you know exactly what you're doing. You'd be bored to tears inside a week with Reverend Andy. This here," he says, gesturing to the wide space between them. "What we do... this is what you want."

"We don't  _do_  anything, Todd!"

He rolls his eyes. "Oh, that again."

"That?"

"Oh,  _why can't you just let it go, why can't you let ME go_...," he says in falsetto, mocking her with her own words.

Sudden livid energy roils inside her, forces her upright from her slouch. She tries to contain it, knows he loves to set her off. She doesn't want to engage... but it comes out anyway.

"What, you think this is just about  _sex_ , Todd? Why do you always reduce it to that and make me sound like some horny teenager? It's about intimacy, and openness and trust and yes, sex is a part of that. But it's not just sex that you're withholding from me—and from yourself, I might add—it's all of it, the whole package! So what's left? What's this thing we do that you think I want so much?"

He's watching her with a small smile. "How do you feel right now?"

"Frustrated! Angry—,"

"Stimulated. Challenged. Alive. When's the last time Andrew made you feel like that?"

"Stop talking about Andrew! This has nothing to do with him. And for the record, after nine months with you, there's a lot to be said for peace and quiet."

He's on his feet at that. "Aha!"

"No, Todd, that's not what I meant. I feel... comfortable with Andrew—,"

"Bored."

"No, peaceful. He's mature, trustworthy—,"

"Dull. Predictable," he says, smirking at her.

"No, I can relax with him and—,"

"Rest up so you get back in the ring with me."

"Shut up! Stop twisting my words."

"Stop lying."

She balls her hands into fists and lets out a frustrated cry.

"Alive, right?" Todd says, almost gleeful, like he's scored the winning touchdown.

He's right, of course... he does make her feel, like no one ever has. But more often than not they're feelings of misery, loneliness, insecurity... she has to remember that, too, if she's ever to get away.

She holds up her hands, palms out, warding him off. Tears are right there, but she works hard not to shed them.

"No," she says tightly, shaking her head, glaring at him. "No. No! I won't do this with you anymore. Maybe this makes you feel alive, but not me. It exhausts me. It makes me  _sad_ , Todd."

She throws her shoulders back and looks at him steadily. "I'm done playing your game on your turf. No trial reconciliation. No more manipulations. No nothing. Sign the divorce papers immediately, or we go to court. Period."

A simple ultimatum that brings with it clarity, resolve, like a hard thing inside, growing, expanding to fill her, something necessary... an inner shield to deflect him, leaving him no way in.

"Out," she says, turns, reaches down for the doorknob. But in a blur of motion he's there, directly behind her, hand on the deadbolt. He turns it with a click.

A flash of memory and he's grabbing her hair again, his deep, gravelly, unfamiliar voice threatening her, his evil smile...

_If I ever throw you out of a window, there won't be anyone around to watch..._

She's flooded with apprehension, trapped between his body and the door. "What are you doing?" she says through clenched teeth.

He's silent. She can't see his face, but can feel his breath ruffling her hair. She tests the air, senses no malice, no immediate threat... but he keeps his hand on the lock.

They stand like that for several heartbeats.

Finally he says, voice barely a whisper, "Don't... don't leave me, Delgado. I know you want to, and yeah, you probably should. But... just don't."

It pierces her heart, but damn if she doesn't recognize this moment... it's one of the dangerous ones, rare and devastating... when even an inner shield is useless because he's open and hurting, the world is full of possibility, and everything she is,  _everythin_ g... just surrenders, just wants to love him. Does love him. It's what she's felt since seeing the flare of pain in his eyes downstairs, at being its cause... it's why she let him in...

Anguish floods her, because it will lead to nothing... again. He will destroy another piece of her... he always does. So she crushes the moment, ignores it's protests that  _maybe this time_... swallows the wail gathering in her throat.

"Unlock the door, Todd."

He's moved closer, almost touches her body, but not quite. She can feel his quickening breaths on her cheek, mouth so close... just a turn of her head...

"What do you want from me, Téa... what can I do? Tell me."

Pounding anguish, the wail rising higher.

"Unlock the door and get out."

She reaches for the deadbolt, touches him, and the feel of his fingers under hers is like a buzz of electricity. But he tightens his grip on the lock.

"No, not that. Something else," he says, low in her ear, intimate, erotic. "I just want some time... like you said... to be alone, away from the lawyers and distractions, to figure out where the two of us stand... together. You said that."

"I was playing you, Todd," she says, voice thin, strained. "I was trying to seduce you."

He's quiet for a time, so close she can hear his lips forming words he doesn't say. His fingers are long, tapered, tracing the curve of the lock. He's so large behind her, so solid and elemental that she feels herself to be less substantial somehow, less real than him. She's vibrating, determined to hide it, tries to regulate her heartbeat and ignore the way his breath turns to liquid on her skin...

"Well... congratulations," he whispers. "You won." He moves against her then, so subtly she thinks it's an accident, expects him to recoil, but he does it again... rocks his pelvis against her briefly, just enough that she can feel, is  _shocked_  to feel... his erection.

She hisses, pushes back to feel him again, but he's already pulled away and she's not bold enough to follow. Proof—that's all he's offering... nothing more. Proof. She knows that in Todd parlance it's a twisted sort of compliment, one-time confirmation that she has, indeed, gotten to him.

"But I can't let it happen, Delgado," he says. The syllables drip like liquid heat into her ear and she almost can't take in their meaning. She's completely shattered... her mouth is dry, a trickle of sweat forms between her breasts and she wants to feel him, hard and ready, wants him inside her so badly she's twitching. Nights and weeks and months of  _wanting_  and here, now... so close...

She leans her brow on the cool, solid comfort of the door, doesn't know who she hates more... this  _cabrón_ , who found a way in by basically following the big freaking  _Enter Here_  sign... or her body, which clearly couldn't be happier that he did. He's right to reduce it to sex. What is she but a horny teenager when it comes to him? Dignity, self-respect... heart, be damned.

 _I can't let it happen, Delgado_...

"But it has happened," she says bitterly. "And you've just made damn sure I know it. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"

He abruptly shifts, grabs her shoulders and she shivers because she's about to be spun, about to feel that mouth on her body, to be thrown to the floor and fucked raw...

"I'll do what I always do," he says. "Not a goddamned thing."

And he shoves her away, hard enough that she stumbles, has to catch herself against the wall. He drops forward, hands flat on the door on either side of where she'd been standing, his arms embracing empty air.

Téa stares, shaken, breathless, hugs herself to shelter against the sudden cold of the room. She'd known it would come... this  _nothing_ , this simple devastation... so why is she surprised?

"You're a dick," she says quietly.

"Yeah, that one I understand. You shouldn't bother with the Spanish names, Delgado, they're just lost on me." He slides his palm across the door, takes the deadbolt between his fingers again, clicks it back and forth absently. "Anyway, it's what we do, right? Me on top, you on top... so to speak."

She hugs herself tighter, laughs humorlessly. "I get it. This is payback for what happened downstairs. So, you're punishing me with this twisted little game of yours..."

"This is your game, Delgado," he says dully, like this particular victory is giving him no pleasure... like maybe he's as tired of the whole damn thing as she is. "It's aaall yours. Always has been."

She sucks in air and squares her shoulders, ready to blow, to unleash the litany of comebacks on the tip of her tongue... but she freezes, mouth open.

Because he's right. Again.

It stings, but yes, she's the one who started it. Almost before the ink was dry on the contract, she'd wanted more... communication, physical intimacy, a real marriage... when all he'd ever wanted, all he was paying her five million dollars for... was a façade. But she pushed and pushed... and then miraculously, he tried. And spectacularly, he failed...

She has the vivid memory of shivering, half-naked in a blizzard, to prove it.

Yet he's the one insisting, against all reason, that the game—and the pain—continues...

"I can't live the way you want, Todd," she says, straining to reach him. "And you can't live the way I want... so if I started this, this  _game_ , then let me finish it. It's over. Please. Let's just walk away."

She waits for the comeback, but he's uncharacteristically silent, just staring through the peephole and into the hallway.

"Do you hear me, Todd? I quit!"

He laughs lightly, his fingers trailing over the curve of the lock.

"It ain't over 'til somebody wins, Delgado."

 


	2. Chapter 2

"Then you win! Okay?"

Todd hears Téa's voice, but feels disconnected from her words, and from the usual chaos of his mind. The visceral memory of her body, the flush of her skin, the scent of her heat are keeping his erection full. He's drowsy, hasn't slept... how many nights now?... but the sleeplessness seems to be enhancing this slow, sweet ache inside him. Maybe he could step into this lull and let her win... give her what she wants without doing too much damage. But it's a dangerous state for him... aroused, exhausted, recently betrayed and humiliated... 

Bad things come to him in this state, impulses and memories, waking dreams... oh, the damage he could do. It may not be instantaneous, but it would certainly be permanent.

"Isn't that what you want, Todd, to win? Isn't that what this is all about? Fine, you win! Okay? I'm not playing anymore."

He swivels his head toward her voice—only his head, keeps his groin toward the door, hidden from her—turns to see her hugging herself, nipples erect though the thin material of her dress, eyes shining, lips plump and wet... smooth golden skin... Jesus. He turns away again, her sultry voice echoing in his head...

_You know, I'm very attracted to you... we could go up to my room... I'm sure we could find a way to... communicate..._

Oh, that was hot... much hotter than her other come ons, though they all affected him, even when she wasn't trying. Those silky robes, that perfect round ass swaying across the room, her smoky eyes fixed on his mouth... so many lonely nights imagining what she looks like when she comes...

But down in the bar was different. And now he knows why—he's going to lose her, lose the possibility of ever being with her. It's no longer a distant event...  _I'll give in someday, in the future, when I've worked through all my shit_...

No. It's now or never. Shit and all.

"You can't forfeit, Delgado. And no ties. Somebody has to win," he says distantly. Click-click, click-click. In the narrow gap between the door and the frame he watches the bolt disappear into the strike plate and withdraw, enter and withdraw...

Oh, this lull in the chaos, this sweet ache...

_You know, I'm very attracted to you..._

She'd put him here, in this room with her, before she'd even finished that sentence. He could feel her naked body rolling beneath his, her thighs wrapping around his hips... but he'd hesitated to act, more out of habit than actual resistance, and he'd had to cast around to remember why the hell he'd ever wanted to resist her in the first place. But that pause of his, that slight hesitation, was exactly what she'd been waiting for...

_Mixed up, IMPOTENT Todd... I might have known you wouldn't be able to RISE to the occasion..._

It had taken a moment for that to sink in, but then, man oh man it cut, like somebody had stabbed him in the gut. And they're still at it, slicing, flaying him alive...

_Our marriage was a joke because you were never MAN enough to make it real..._

Vicious words, spat at him in public from those gorgeous lips...

_Never MAN enough..._

And hasn't that always been his fear, the reason behind so much of the evil shit he's done? But to hear that, from her... scorched earth devastation. She had to know what it would do to him... it must have been the key to her plan... to push his buttons, make him feel inadequate, make him lash out and want to hurt her... even if only for a moment...

Yeah, he had wanted to hurt her... and something deep inside him, something only half-buried, jumped for joy. And a hated voice whispered...

_'Atta boy... knew you still had it in you..._

He'd caught onto her game fast after that... she'd only been baiting him. No harm done. Just words. Just empty words...

Right?

She'd left the bar with Andrew, Reverend Savior come to deliver the innocent from evil. No fucking way was that happening. So Todd had followed them to this room, stood outside the door without knowing quite what to do... just that he couldn't let any of that shit stand. She'd had control for too long... months of making him jump through hoops, pushing him into places that terrified him... but he  _tried_ , because that's what she wanted. He'd actually started to think that maybe she saw something in him that he didn't, the potential to be different, better... and maybe she could be the one to—

No. Fuck that. He needed to take back control. It was pretty easy to play her the way she'd played him, and he should have left it at that... but he's not satisfied with the little wins, isn't done, needs more...

_Mixed up, IMPOTENT Todd..._

Just words...

He swallows, tastes bile, feels the metal of the deadbolt hard in his fingers, Delgado's eyes on him... Delgado's mocking eyes...

And it crashes like a wrecking ball into his consciousness, a certainty surging up from deep inside that sends him into a primal panic—

Those weren't just simple words used to manipulate him. They were the truth:  _Delgado thinks he isn't MAN enough to fuck her_...

He has to fight for air, feels like he's being annihilated. It's so familiar, this terror, so twisted and deeply-rooted in dark nights he can only remember in dreams of sour breath and hands like paws... and a lifetime ago it would have driven him to unspeakable violence...

But he's not that man anymore and it's only a dream... an old dream...

_You were never man enough..._

_You're not a man... you're a curse!_

He cringes at the sudden appearance of Marty's voice in his head, never far away, Marty beneath him, all around him...

He wrenches his focus back to Téa, her eyes on him, judging. She's supposed to understand... it's not that he can't be with her, it's that he won't, for reasons that are none of her damn business, reasons even he doesn't fully understand. It's better to just steer clear of the whole mess.

But there's a big difference between  _won't_  do it and  _can't_  do it. A huge difference. A chasm-sized difference full of shame, trauma, violence and dreams that haunt and pull him away...

And if she thinks he  _can't_... well, fuck, he needs to set a bitch straight.

It's the best reason yet for giving in. It's perfect.

Click, click... click, click. Back and forth he turns the deadbolt, not feeling Téa's eyes on him anymore, not wanting to feel them. He should just let her go, let her be safe with Andrew... so many reasons...

Not to.

He'll give in, give her what she wants. She'll shut up and stick around and when he finally sleeps, maybe he'll dream a new dream where he's a different man, a better man. But first he has to fuck the doubt right out of her. It'll be about proving himself, and that's all... not about love or desire or intimacy or any of that other crap that gets him in trouble. Maybe he'll make it rough to teach her a little lesson. Then he'll back off again, alone and safe, and deal with her next round of whining when it comes.

Though... it's been a long time... what if—

—No. He'll prove himself. He has to.

Téa's voice fills the air around him... sounds that float but don't land....

He'll make it quick. It doesn't have to be good... in fact, it's probably better if it's not good, not too good, anyway. He doesn't want her bugging him for more right away. But it can't be so bad that she'll take off afterwards, laughing, wondering why she wasted her time. And then she might tell somebody... like Rachel, or God forbid  _Andrew_... no he's got to at least be a better lay than Reverend Andy. So... pretty good, but not mind-blowing... he can probably do that, first time back in the saddle and all... but if—

"Todd... are you all right?"

She snuck up on him, is suddenly too close.

"Shit, Delgado!"

She leaps back, hand pressed to her throat. "Jesus, Todd!" 

"Well, you don't just creep up on a person!"

"Creep up? I've been talking to you!"

"Look, whatever. Okay, Delgado, I can do this. Let's do this," he says in a rush, before he changes his mind.

She looks surprised, swallows, nods slowly. "All right then... good. I'll have Nora send over the papers." She bites her lower lip. "I must say, I didn't expect—"

"What papers... what are you talking about?"

"The divorce papers. You just said—,"

"I didn't say anything about divorce papers."

"Todd, you just agreed—,"

"Look, shut up about the fucking divorce papers. I'm talking about sex, Delgado." He takes a deep breath, forces it out from his gut like he's bracing to lift a heavy weight. "Yeah, I'm ready. Let's do it."

He reaches for her and her eyes fly wide.

"Todd, what are you doing?"

"What you want. This is what you want, Delgado. You get to win," he says, trying not to shake as he slips a hand behind her resistant head. Her hair is so soft... it occurs to him that he's never touched it before. No, he did, that's right, when he wrapped that cashmere scarf around her neck before they went to the Bayberry Inn. Shit, that night was a disaster. He was downright vicious to her...

And earlier, when he threatened her in the bar, he fisted his hand in her soft, soft hair... he was vicious then, too...

She's pulling away. Why would she pull away? Maybe this is too sudden. She said something about divorce papers.

"Todd," she says. "You're acting very... weird."

Weird. Is he acting weird? A little wired maybe. Same letters, different words. Wired. Weird. His visual mind plays with the letters to see if they can form a brand new word... years spent writing sensational, pun-infested headlines will do that...

His hand is in her hair, still... but she's much too far away, eyeing him critically from under furrowed brows. She still believes he can't fuck her.

There are reasons... so many reasons why he shouldn't do it... he gets attached, too emotional irrational insane, especially when he can't sleep... and he can't think straight because he does things, evil things—

"What's going on, Todd?"

But he can't let her keep thinking  _that_ —

Shit. Shit shit. The room is fading, slipping away... and no, please... he's caught up in one of his waking dreams... and now he's in the penthouse. Marty's there, by the door, kneeling over...  _shit_ , he hates being dragged into this moment but he's tangled up in it and can never get away for long. He just has to wait it out, has to watch Marty kneel over Patrick's body again, blood everywhere, bloody red, so much blood in that hairy goddamn Mick. It's staining Marty's wedding gown... oozing up until she's all red, too. Her finger is pointing at Todd, condemning him, slicing into him, into his heart...

_Don't say my name! Don't you dare say my name!_

Marty knows what kind of man he is. She's always known... he sure showed her that he  _can_...

But that was the old dream...

He closes his eyes uselessly against the vision in his head, the silent screams and damning eyes. He should sit down. How much sleep last night... none. Two hours on Thursday...

"Are you all right?" Téa's voice, wary, her hand tight on his wrist. He's still got his hand in her hair, can't seem to let go because it's anchoring him. "You're not yourself..."

He's at the Palace Hotel. In Delgado's room. She invited him... no, she doesn't want him here, wants to quit the game, told him to leave...

 _Not man enough_...

She's tugging his wrist, trying to pull away from him, but her hair is so soft between his fingers that he makes a fist, holds her tight. Her body, mouth, hands, so perfect... they're  _his_... and he  _wants_...

Evil, stupid shit he's done... emotional irrational insane... because of wanting... wanting love, wanting to not hurt... wanting a real family. Delgado did that to him... Blair did that to him first...

Téa is watching him with eyes the color of black coffee, full of concern even now... but her features fade, transform...

... and Todd is caught up again, dumped back at the penthouse and he's looking into the cold eyes of that Irish terrorist Mahoney, who is leveling a gun at his heart...

_I'll kill you first and spare you having to watch your family die..._

Delgado, out cold on the floor. Starr, asleep upstairs. This is some crazy shit Todd set in motion, all because he saw Patrick screwing Blair on the penthouse floor... and that hairy bastard had to pay...

...and Jesus God, the gun goes off, the Mick shoots Starr in her crib and she never makes a sound, but Marty is suddenly on the floor wailing, covered in blood...

Too much stress, too little sleep and Todd has got to shake this off...

He orients himself, heart pounding in his ears... he's not at the penthouse, he's at the Palace Hotel, his hands are rough on Delgado and she's telling him he's not himself...

"That's good though, right, if I'm somebody else?" he rasps, mouth parched, quaking in his skin as bloody visions mix before his eyes. "Somebody who won't do... the things I've done. Somebody who won't get his family killed because he's  _jealous_ —"

"Todd... are you... are you talking about Blair and Patrick? That's in the past!"

He focuses on her. Yeah, that's right, that was then. Right now Starr is at home, sleeping quietly, never heard a thing when the shots were fired. But Téa is suddenly falling to the floor in slow-motion, her wedding gown soaked with blood...

The threats are ringing in his ears, the Irish lilt, ...  _I'll kill your wife... I'll kill your baby..._

But then is now, it's always _now_  in these waking dreams. He's losing Téa for real and he has to make her stay and change him... she has to remake him so this won't keep happening...

He lets go of her, shoves his knuckles into his eyes to chase away the visions. They're not going away easily this time. All fucked up, not enough sleep...

With solid effort, he finds a still place inside and roots himself in it, manages to form words... "I don't want you hurt, Delgado, don't you get it?" he says, knuckles making sparks in his eyes. "There's a reason I can't  _do_  this! People get hurt, people die. That's what happens!"

"Todd," she says, and her hand is on his arm, guiding him across a room that doesn't seem real. But she seems real. "Come, sit down."

But he's pulled away again, and this time it isn't a memory... it's a dream that's haunted him since he bombed the hell out of Guy Armitage and his yacht. He tries to look away from the horror—Armitage wasn't supposed to be there!!!—tries to focus anywhere else, but it's too vivid inside... so he has to watch the dream, has to watch Starr crawl around the penthouse, cooing as she finds bits of the man he murdered... a finger here, an eyeball there... and she reassembles his body like a bloody, mangled puzzle on the white living room rug...

All to frame Patrick. Because Patrick screwed Blair on the penthouse floor and Todd saw it...

Standing in the doorway, freshly resurrected, brought back to life in Ireland by the sustaining dream of Blair, his wife, the mother of his child... standing there sick with horror as they roll together at his feet, Blair and the man he died to protect. He claws at his chest, tears out his heart and tosses the bloody thing on the heap of their writhing bodies before turning away, fading away... changed, forever, irreparably... unmade and dead again...

"Todd," Téa says, bringing him gently, mercifully back to the present. "When was the last time you slept?"

He hears a small whimper, realizes it came from him. He fumbles for Téa's hand, clasps it in his, so soft, feels for her wedding ring... she hasn't taken it off, she's still his. He raises her palm, cups it to his cheek. "I'm trying to explain, Delgado," he says. "So you'll  _get it_."

He has to tell her... so she'll finally understand why he won't touch her, why he won't feel her.  _Won't_ , not can't.

"It's too much, Téa," he says, hears his voice breaking. "I told you, I'm a human nerve ending... the energy it takes to not  _hurt_  something... there's nothing left for you... I told you that at the Bayberry Inn. There was snow, right? I tasted it on my tongue when I told you."

"Don't talk, okay?" Téa is sitting next to him on the sofa, one hand on his cheek, the other a firm weight on his shoulder. "Just try to breathe."

"Right, breathe." He forces himself to breathe because Téa told him to and she's usually right about things. But not about the divorce. No divorce. He has to find a new dream, one without blood... and she's the one, so she has to stay...

"You can't have a divorce," he says and laughs weakly because she won't know why he said that... it's a non-sequitur from his mind to her ear.

 _Oh shit, keep breathing, Manning, you're cracking up_.

The visions fade as he breathes, pushed away by the brisk intake of stale Palace Hotel air. Smoothing out now, things are smoothing out, yeah, keep breathing. One train of thought to ride now, just the one... she hasn't taken off the ring... she's still yours, and  _what the fuck was all that_...

"Delgado."

"I'm here."

He presses Téa's hand harder to his cheek, feels her other hand moving on his back, rubbing in circles, clockwise, wise as a clock that moves forward, never backward. She would do it that way... to remind him that that's the best direction to go in. Forward, not backward.

Easier said than done.

"That was bad," he whispers. "So... bloody..."

The voices are almost gone, all but the one...

_I thought you couldn't hurt me more than you already have... but you found a way to finally, completely ruin what I had left in my life..._

Marty...

_Don't say my name! Don't you dare say my name!!_

_Oh, go away_ , he begs her ghost.  _Please go away._.. but she's always there, and she'll never go away. Because he made her.

"She called it a psychotic vendetta," he rasps over the sound of Marty's voice, so loud inside, every word she said the night Patrick died... bereft, shattered, but more powerful than anything he'll ever say or ever hear again.

"Todd, what? Who did?" Téa's hands are suddenly painful and cruel... mercy is cruel... so he shrinks from them, shoves away from her body.

"I finished her off the night I got Patrick killed... finished what I started." It rises then, a tsunami of grief crashing over him... the utter futility of trying to be remade, of hoping for anything more. "Now I can never—,"

The words slam to a halt in his throat, choke him... and snap him awake.

He's in Téa's room at the Palace Hotel... solid now, fully present. He sits bolt upright, the blood turning to ice water in his veins. He was about to spill his guts... to  _her_... about to lose control forever by revealing one of his greatest regrets...

So... fucking... weak.

What the hell is happening to him...? It's not lack of sleep... he's gone longer than this without losing his shit...

_Now I can never—_

He swallows the rest of his confession like bile, but not in time. A stillness engulfs the room, a tense watchfulness, the countdown to an execution.

"Never make it right," Téa whispers, voice dripping with compassion that eats into his ears like poison. "Marty. Never be  _forgiven_..."

He implodes with silent, wracking violence, shudders with it once, twice, then goes deadly still. It had seemed crucial to make her understand him... to let her in. But he was so fucking wrong. And what she's offering now makes him burn with hatred.

"Shut up, Delgado." A growl. Barely human.

_Her._

She's what's happening to him. It's all an illusion, a lie. Getting him to trust her... getting him to want what she's pretending to offer... companionship, understanding, a chance to be different, to be  _better_... and all he has to do is behave himself...

But even then, she'll yank it away, viciously, just like she did earlier in the bar, reducing him to this simpering, whimpering pile of useless shit...

And she'll laugh. Because to her, it's all a fucking game. A game she started and now wants to quit... without having lost a thing. Well, he'll show her what losing really feels like...

"Todd—,"

"I said... shut. Your. Mouth." He stands slowly... calm, sure... and looks down at her, relishes the uncertainty in her eyes, the way she begins to shrink away from him into the sofa. She's suddenly so small. So powerless...

He hasn't felt this  _in control_  in a very, very long time.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Téa stares up at Todd, blindsided... seconds ago he was shaken, barely coherent, wracked by inner demons or exhaustion or both, mood shifting like colors in a kaleidoscope. He'd been unreachable at first, but seemed to respond to her touch... until he didn't. He's watching her, his cold eyes chilling her to the bone. She shrinks back in spite of herself, compassion evaporating... and just who the hell does he think he's talking to?

"Shut my mouth, Todd? Really?"

He's standing directly in front of her, looming, legs not quite touching her knees, fingers flexing.

"You won't be happy until I'm a chalk outline, will you, Delgado...," he says quietly. "Or one of those little dogs you can fit in your purse."

Her skin prickles at the sound of his voice; strange, gravelly, like in the bar, but deeper and disused... something that has been locked away.

"Okay," she says lightly, thinking it might be wise to hide her discomfort. "I have no idea what you're talking about..."

"I'm talking about annihilation."

She recoils at a hard, cruel flash in his face. It could almost be hate.

_If I ever throw you out of a window, there won't be anyone around to watch..._

She drops her gaze, clears her throat. "Maybe you should sit down, Todd." She slides over, pats the cushion next to her, but he takes a lateral step and stays in front of her, moves closer, presses a leg between her knees.

"I don't want to sit down," he says with more energy, like her moment of doubt fueled him. "There are a lot of things I haven't wanted to do... but that never seems to matter to you."

She looks up quickly... his eyes, shadowed under a heavy brow, are empty, black sockets. It's a creepy illusion that hints at something very real. She sifts through the last few minutes for clues to what set him off... he's been so unpredictable, mercurial, lost in his inner world tonight—she doesn't know what's in there, he won't share even the smallest part with her—but it was after the mention of Marty, the overwhelming sense of grief he radiated... her attempt to connect...? Is that it... she had the gall to try and understand him?

And regarding Marty, too. She got too close... and now, of course, she has to be exiled...

"Todd," she begins gently... to apologize, make peace, assure him she'll back off...

"Don't try to shrink me, Delgado," he growls, like he's reading her mind. "You don't know shit."

She bristles, sets her jaw. "I know that trying to intimidate me isn't a great way of getting me to agree to a trial reconciliation."

"Am I trying to intimidate you?" he says mildly.

He may be genuinely unaware of the effect he's having. She stares up at him, tries to figure him out, but he's oddly... opaque.  

"Your manner is intimidating, yes."

"No... you just don't recognize me when I'm not kissing your ass."

She hoots a laugh. "When have you ever kissed my ass, Todd? You've done nothing but treat—,"

He swoops down, startling her into silence, and shoves his face very close to hers. He says, barely above a whisper, "I seem to remember telling you to shut your mouth."

She's suddenly on edge. "Right, Todd. That's not intimidating at all."

They stay like that, faces inches apart, eyes locked. His breath is warm on her lips, the scent of his hair surrounds her and she's caught between apprehension and a growing, unwelcome arousal at having him so close, at being the object of this laser-focused aggression...

"I want you on that bed," he says.

She reels back, as shocked as if he'd hit her. It's a command that a month ago would have ignited a bonfire inside her. But this isn't desire... this is revenge.

"What did you say?"

"You heard me," he says, pressing his palms into the back of the sofa on either side of her shoulders, effectively trapping her. "You set things in motion... with your games... your teasing..."

She shakes her head, holds up a hand to ward him off, tries to lighten the mood. "Not exactly what I had in mind, Todd."

"What then... flowers, candles? This isn't a romance, little girl," he says softly, with a bitter smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "I could have had you anytime... you know? Isn't that what you were counting on?"

She takes a beat to let that sink in, to absorb what she thinks she's hearing...

"Counting on...?" she says with deliberate calm, because he couldn't mean... "Listen to yourself, Todd.  _Had me_? Are you implying that I wanted you to... rape me?"

A dozen hard emotions play over his face before his lips curl up in a haunting smile.

"It's not rape if you want it."

Her gut twists with disgust and she reflexively shoves at him, knocks him back, but he recovers and pushes his leg up between hers, forcing the hem of her dress high up on her thighs.

"My God, Todd, this is sick. Stop it!"

"Because you say so? Uh-uh."

He leans so close she can see flecks of gold in his hazel eyes. They seem strangely distant, almost vacant, like he's not seeing her...

"Todd—"

"Shut up. My game, my rules. Rule number one... you don't fuck with me. Now, get on that bed!"

Her mouth goes dry with fear at what appears to be happening, but she's equally sure she's wrong. Ridiculous... this is _Todd_. His goal is to win her back; it's unlikely he'd do anything to jeopardize that outcome. This is playacting. He said it himself... it's his game, but he's taking it way too far...

"Enough now, Todd. You're scaring me."

He leans down and presses his lips to her ear, speaks so softly it's like the words are appearing in her own mind. "You should always be scared. I am."

She rears back to see his face, and her breath freezes in her lungs; it's the face from the bar, the malevolent face of someone she'd always thought was an exaggeration, a myth ...

Someone who could—

She tries to get to her feet, but he shoves her down. "Bed's the other way," he hisses. "But this'll do." He grabs her hair with one hand, her hip with the other, fingers digging in, and twists her roughly until she's on her back beneath him.

"Get off me, Todd!" she cries, punching at him, bucking wildly.  _"This is assault!"_

But he's a brutal, immovable force. He absorbs the blows and rams his knee hard between her legs, spreading them wide. "Yeah, keep fighting," he says in a voice so foreign and cruel that she erupts into full-blown panic.

"Todd!" she shrieks, writhing, clawing at his arms.

He stares down at her with that haunting smile, long hair swinging, eyes unfocused, empty and cold as ice...

And suddenly they widen... and seem to clear. He releases her, rears up, gulps at the air like he's been drowning. "Jesus... Jesus," he chokes out, pitches away and collapses in a clumsy heap on the far end of the sofa. " _Delgado_..."

She pushes herself upright on shaky arms, panting, heart hammering, and gapes at him like he's a monster before she shrieks and lunges, slugs him across the face with every ounce of strength she has.

His head snaps back, but he doesn't react.

"You FUCK!" she screams. "You mother-fucking  _pinche cabrón_  FUCK! Were you about to  _rape_  me?!"

He doesn't move, doesn't touch his reddening cheek, just stares straight ahead, dazed.

"You better fucking answer me!" she hisses, shaking as the burst of adrenaline begins to fade.

He swings his head toward her, winces, seems to finally feel the pain of her blow, runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek, ballooning it outward.

"When did you start saying  _fuck_  so much?" he says from a distance, like he doesn't quite know what's happening.

"When you started trying to _rape_  me, asshole!"

He drops his head forward, shoves his hands into his hair, keeps them there. "Stop saying that... that word. Don't say that word. Shit..." He sounds genuinely confused, increasingly distraught. "I was dreaming... you were... there was a girl, a blonde from—"

"—Oh, just get out!" Téa screams.

"Okay." But he doesn't move.

She lurches to her feet and stumbles to the heavy oak cabinet under the TV, throws open the door, grabs a tiny bottle of rum from the mini bar inside, twists the cap, downs it in one gulp. She ignores the scorch in her throat, lets the heat of it spread through her chest and dissolve about one percent of her outrage. She doesn't usually drink  _in extremis_ , but it seems like something someone would do in this situation. She's just glad she doesn't have a gun.

She turns to find Todd still slumped over, hands fisted in his hair. "Yeah, I'm going," he mutters without looking up.

She turns back, grabs and drains a tiny whiskey, then a tiny vodka; they scorch in different ways, but are equally effective. She breathes in, breathes out, repeatedly, lets the air expand her lungs until they hurt, lets the ugly, painful memory of his hands on her body fade enough that she's fairly sure she can look at him without wanting someone to sever his balls with pruning shears. She pivots toward him too quickly, sways, leans back against the cabinet for support.

His chin is tucked down and he's watching her from under his brow like a guilty dog.

The rage has mostly faded. Now comes the hurt. It's all she can do not to cry...

_How could you DO that to me..._

But she won't show weakness. Not now. She stays propped against the cabinet, works to keep her voice steady.

"Number one," she says, swallows a sob, has to start again. "Number one: there is no excuse for what you just did, and if you ever try anything like that again, I will personally see to it that you rot in Statesville. Do you understand me?"

He sags under an invisible weight. "Téa—,"

"Do you understand me?"

He nods.

"Number two: you will give me my divorce. Immediately. No more stalling, no more bullshit. You are far too insane and dangerous to live with. Do you understand?"

His brows furrow, jaw works overtime.

"Todd?"

"Is there a number three?" he says.

"I'm not kidding. Don't make me use what happened here in court. I will press charges, Todd. Plenty of people saw you grab me in the bar. Andrew will testify that you came to my room in an agitated state, that you were belligerent, that you demanded—,"

"But you sent him away—,"

"Shut up. With your history and my testimony, I don't think even the great Sam Rappaport—,"

"—Stop." He holds up his hand. "I get it." He sighs heavily, slumps back into the cushions, leg bent under him at an awkward angle and stares at a spot on the floor like it's a trapdoor to hell. "Delgado, just shut up a second and let me—,"

"—No. There are no excuses for attempted rape."

"Please—," he blanches, swallows hard, voice like a ghost. "Please quit saying that word."

"That's what it was."

He pitches forward, so suddenly that she's sure he's about to vomit, but he freezes—elbows on his knees, head in his hands—and moans softly. He's hurting... that much is obvious, and he's guilty, broken... so harmless now. She shouldn't engage, shouldn't try to understand what he did because there is no excuse, but her training, her nature... her goddamned need for answers...

"It's because I got too close, isn't it?" she says. "And I had to be punished."

He's motionless, silent for so long that she starts to repeat the question she already knows the answer to. But he finally moves, and she can tell from the slight swing of his hair that he's nodding. "At first... yeah," he says. "But then—"

"—You are completely twisted!" she cries, not letting him finish. "You know that."

The hair swings in affirmation.

"I would have backed off," she says. "If you'd just told me—,"

"—Yeah, right," he mutters into his hands.

"You never gave me a  _chance_ , Todd. You never—," she catches the rising heat in her voice, clenches her fists, forces herself to disengage, to remember what he did, his determination, her shocking  _helplessness_. Answers don't matter right now. "Regardless of the circumstances," she says, voice like ice again. "Regardless of how you felt, regardless of what I did or didn't do, there is absolutely no excuse for your behavior."

Silence.

"Do you hear me? You intimidated me. You threatened me. You  _assaulted_  me. I was terrified, Todd! You were going to—,"

"—I wouldn't  _do_  that to you," he jumps in, voice paper thin.

She pauses, recalls his unfocused, empty eyes, the sense of... vacancy... of absence... his subsequent confusion...

"Maybe not... consciously," she says. "And that was number three on my list, which I will deny if asked about in court. It's possible, given what I've seen tonight—your exhaustion, your erratic behavior—that you were not entirely in control of your actions."

He looks up, face open, sincere and heartbreaking. He shakes his head, lips start to form words, but he stops, seems to decide against explaining himself.

"I would never hurt you, Delgado."

"But Todd," she says, trying not to be moved by that face, and failing. "If you're not in control, you can't be sure of that. That's what  _not in control_  means. And I will no longer put myself in a position where I can be harmed by you. In any way."

She knows that legally, she's got him. But part of her—the frustratingly stubborn part—is determined to make him understand why it has come to this, why she needs to leave him. Why it's his own damn fault. And there may be no better time than now, when he's so thoroughly defeated. She pushes away from the cabinet and crosses a bit unsteadily to the sofa, the alcohol mixing, warming her body. He shrinks back as she approaches, like he's expecting another blow, and she realizes only now that her knuckles are aching, notices that the red mark on his cheek is darkening to purple. He sees where she's looking, scowls, drops and hides his face in his hands again.

She sits on the low table opposite him and presses her palms together as a way to center herself. She couldn't get closer to him even if she wanted to; his self-hatred is surrounding him like a force-field, a thick death shroud. For her to hate him, too, just seems pointless and wasteful, like pouring hot coffee into an overflowing mug. She has better things to do with her resources.

She eyes the sliver of bruise peeking through his veil of hair. "Despite... recent evidence to the contrary, Todd, I don't want to hurt you, either," she says carefully, like she's easing the pin out of a hand grenade. "I...  _care_  about you... and that makes me vulnerable, not just physically, but emotionally. It means you can hurt me, even if that's not your intention. I don't want to hurt anymore. You can understand not wanting to hurt."

He's motionless for a beat, then the hair swings vigorously from side to side.

She bites back a smile, but it finds its way into her voice. "Yes, you can. I know you can." He can be so childlike, so charming... but she stiffens, remembering empty eyes, rough, relentless hands pushing her down into the sofa cushions. "You hurt me, Todd. All the time. And you seem to keep finding new ways."

He raises his head, face pressed between his palms, and looks so lost, so  _sorry_  that she imagines dropping to her knees and hugging him, rocking him, telling him it doesn't have to be this way, that she wants so badly to help him, if he'd only let her. But recent, very painful experience reminds her that he can't,  _won't_ , accept tenderness... not from her, anyway. She erases the image and stays firmly perched on the coffee table.

He sags back into the cushions, sighs deeply, eyes wide and fixed on nothing in particular. "So, Delgado," he says dully. "I guess you really have won."

She stares at him, uncomprehending. She's been so focused on him that the words take a moment to land, but when they do, she's lifted by a wave of euphoria. She won. She  _won_. And he  _admitted it_. Todd acknowledging defeat can mean only one thing—it's over. She's  _free_. She closes her eyes in wild relief, but only for a moment... the room is spinning.

"I really should be grateful, I suppose," she says to clear her head. "You finally gave me the out I needed."

His presence on the sofa is a heavy sight—forlorn, miserable—but he manages a wan smile.

"Told you... never boring."

"Never boring." She can grant him that now. It's an ending—not unlike other endings in her life—but a particularly hard-fought and bittersweet one. She reaches over, takes a chance and touches his hand. He allows it, so she lingers, tears burning behind her eyes at all the dashed hopes, the lost possibilities. They could have made a real family together—something neither of them had ever had—and it could have been so  _good_. If only he'd been able to get out of the way.

Sudden pain tightens her chest as Starr's face flashes before her eyes. Yes. She'll miss Starr most of all.

"Okay, Todd," she says, on the verge of tears. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze, releases it. "On your way."

He nods absently, starts to stand, but the leg that had been folded beneath him buckles when he puts weight on it. He drops back heavily onto the sofa.

"Shit."

"Todd...," she growls, instantly suspicious, all tears and warmth gone.

"Leg's asleep," he says, lightly punching his thigh.

"No." She scrambles to her feet. "You don't get to drag this out..."

"Not my choice, Delgado," he mutters, rubs his knuckles hard over his quadriceps. "Figures that my leg's the only part of me that can get any sleep."

She scowls, eyes him sidelong, sure he's faking... but faking or not, a minute or two won't matter. She's free.

"So, does anything help with that?"

"Yeah, not twisting all up like a pretzel."

"No, Todd, with the  _sleeping_."

"Oh, that. No, Delgado, it's not a warm-milk-before-bed kind of thing. It's—oh, oh  _shit_ , pins and needles." He stiffens, groans, and she watches him grit his teeth as the sensation burns through his limb. She finds his discomfort... satisfying.

"It's what?" she says when he relaxes.

"What?"

She rolls her eyes. "The sleep. You started to say—,"

"—Oh that. No, You don't want to know what it is."

She should be past caring, now that she's  _free_ , and she tries to stop herself, but a wail borne of deep, constant frustration erupts from her. "Fine! See, this is it! This is your typical withholding garbage—"

"All right! Geez," he grumbles, bobbles his leg. "If you gotta know, there are these dreams. People I... people dying. It's Starr and—," he stops, looks up at her sharply, then away. "Ugly stuff. Old stuff. Sometimes I can grab a nap at the office... whatever."

"What about the penthouse?"

He recoils. "No. That's not good... site of too much... shit..."

"But Todd, you have to sleep! You can't function on catnaps. Sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture."

"Don't I know it."

"And it's not just you. Other people could get hurt, if you're driving, or—"

"Provoked." He looks at her hard. His face clouds and he crosses his arms roughly, hunches in on himself, winces like he's pressed a fresh bruise. "Look, Delgado... about—," he breaks off, swallows, and his forcefield of self-hatred seems to grow, reaches out until it's touching her, inviting her to join the condemnation... but she refuses. She can't help but be affected by his pain, as she always is—

—As she also would be by any other dumb, suffering animal who doesn't understand its predicament, she reminds herself harshly.

_You're free, you idiot!_

She drags up the memory of his cruel, haunting smile, the knee pressing up between her legs, her helplessness and cold, blind panic...

_You're free now!_

Yes. Yes. But she's also curious about underlying causes, about human nature in general. About the enigma that is Todd, in particular. She thinks back... and it's true; he rarely seems to sleep. When she lived at the penthouse, she would hear him prowling the halls at night, was often startled awake by his voice, eerie, crying out with nonsense words... and there were times she'd get up to investigate a noise and find him posted like a sentry outside Starr's bedroom, eyes wild, staring at nothing, until he'd gradually become aware of Téa's presence. He would mutter then, tell her to quit spying on him, quit stumbling around in the dark...

How could she have missed something so obvious? Chronic insomnia. It explains so much...  _insanity_. This is a dangerous situation for him... but potentially worse for Starr. Téa consciously shifts into lawyer mode.

"Todd, you acknowledge that your behavior this evening has been bizarre, yes?"

He looks confused by the abrupt change in tone, shrugs noncommittally.

"How much of that would you attribute to exhaustion?"

"What, you want percentages?" he grumbles.

"Ballpark."

More shrugging.

"But sleeplessness is a contributing factor, Todd. You were delusional, hallucinating..."

"You're only saying that 'cause I was seeing things. And what's that elephant doing here?"

"Very funny."

He thinks so... his lip curls up in a half-smile. He seems to be relaxing again, enjoying the banter... too much so for Téa's liking. "All joking aside, there is an elephant in the room, Todd," she says. "I'm dead serious about the divorce. Don't think I'm not. I  _will_  press assault charges."

He scowls, pulls the lapels of his jacket together like a shield, drops his head. "Yeah, I heard you, Delgado."

"I want those papers signed. But... I think your judgement is impaired from lack of sleep. This needs to be airtight... I don't want any room for you or Sam to claim that you are somehow  _incompetent_ , that I coerced you. Do you understand?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

She pauses, considers possibilities, ramifications. He needs to be rested, in full possession of his faculties—such as they are—before the lawyers are notified. This is insane, what she's planning...  every screeching cell in her body is confirming it. Bitter experience reminds her that he can be slippery, but she's got him cornered and he knows it...

"I'm saying, you need sleep, Todd," she says.

He looks up, follows her gaze to the neatly-made four-poster bed, narrows his eyes.

"Here?"

"Why not? You said you can't sleep at the penthouse, and if you go to the office you'll only end up torturing everyone. At least here, you'll be comfortable and—"

"—I thought you were trying to get rid of me..."

"I am, and I've decided that, ultimately, this is the best, most  _permanent_ , way to do it."

"Oh, I get it... Reverend Andy'll come in, see me all sprawled out, figure it's a good time to drive a stake through my heart, end of problem."

"He doesn't believe you have a heart, Todd. No one does. Besides, I'm going down to meet him before he comes storming back up here. You'll have the room to yourself for a few hours."

"Andrew storming. More like a drizzle," he sneers. "He's probably out there now, peeking through the keyhole." He turns, flips his middle finger at the door. He pushes up to his feet, rubs his bruised cheek, seems distinctly uncomfortable.

"Look, Delgado, I'm just gonna head out—,"

"Todd, you're a wreck! You're hallucinating, and frankly, I don't think you should be around Starr until you're fully in control of yourself. Look what happened earlier... with me..."

He rounds on her, bellowing. "I would never hurt Starr. Don't you use her—,"

"—You said you would never hurt  _me_."

Pain flashes across his face, but he glares at her, nostrils flaring. He jams his hands in his pockets, gradually eases back. "You don't get it. It doesn't matter where I am. It won't work."

"Try. It's quiet... it's different. There are no associations with this room, there's nothing to distract you."

She stands, blocking his path to the door, and waves him toward the bed. "Just try. No arguing."

He grouses, but shuffles away across the carpet in his stocking feet. When he reaches the bed, he turns to scowl at her like any petulant child at bedtime. "Why are you being  _nice_  to me," he says, acidly.

"Trust me, it's completely self-serving. Now sleep."

He tips back, plops down on the mattress, bounces a few times. "So, what... you'll go down to the bar now, hang out with Andy, report everything that happened... how I tried to make you sacrifice a goat to me..."

"It's not like that."

"No? What's it like?" He looks down, runs a flat palm over the smooth white bedspread, then punches it lightly with his fist. "No associations, huh? Has he been... here... with you?"

He's so fragile and beaten that she feels she can answer honestly, even though it's none of his business, even though a different answer might help convince him that she's moved on... despite her earlier...  _weakness..._  for him.

"Believe it or not, Todd, Andrew and I have never slept together."

And then she witnesses a truly amazing transformation... it's as though the weight of a thousand painful assumptions and agonizing fantasies seems to slide from his shoulders and he's suddenly brighter than she's seen him in weeks; he looks vindicated... hopeful. Victorious. He smiles at her like a kid on Christmas morning.

"Look, Todd," she says, realizing the enormity of her error, scrambling to undo some of the damage to her cause. "That's not to say we won't do it. Tonight even, right here. Repeatedly."

"So that's why you're still wearing your wedding ring," he crows.

Her thumb jerks instinctively to the ring, the visible proof that she hasn't been quite willing—or able—to let this madman go. She rubs it angrily like it betrayed her.

"This means nothing. I've just gotten used to it. I forgot it was there."

"Bullshit, Delgado."

"Okay, Todd, forget it," she says in an effort to restore things to their rightful order. "This... you sleeping here... is clearly a mistake. You've absolutely got the wrong idea. Nothing has changed."

He swings his legs up, lays back on the bed and crosses his arms behind his head. "Boy, am I ever tired." He lets loose a huge, phony yawn. "You know, Delgado, you're right; all I need is a good night's sleep, and this is just the place. Thanks for the invite."

Téa stands in the middle of her hotel room and glowers at him, speechless, wondering how she lost the advantage so quickly and so thoroughly. She still has the threat of legal action on her side, has every intention of using it... she'll still win the war and get her divorce, but somehow she feels like she's lost this particular battle.

"Alive, right?" Todd says, watching her with an expression of pure glee.

She scowls, has to bite down on her teeth and turn away so he won't see her smile.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Téa shakes her head, the annoying smile still tugging at her lips. She tries to sound stern as she turns back to Todd, lounging in triumph on her bed.

"You are a such a _pendejo_."

"Yeah, but I'm your _pendejo_ ," he says, eyeing her almost playfully in the warm light of the setting sun.

She shakes her head, tries to stay firm. "Go to sleep, Todd."

"You know, Delgado...," he sits up, bends his legs awkwardly, pulls off his socks one by one and tosses them on the floor. "You should just come on home. What's four weeks?"

A seedling of possibility starts to grow inside her, but she yanks it out by the roots. "Four weeks with you could be the death of me."

He rolls his eyes.

Every fiber is telling her to step off the ride, disengage, but she can't resist. "And why should I, Todd? Aside from the fact that you're a raving lunatic, you and I want radically different things. And we make each other miserable!"

"You don't make me miserable." He sits up straight, hesitates, and forces out words that seem to not want saying. "You... you make me realize how miserable I am. There's a difference."

She knows that admission wasn't easy for him, and ordinarily she'd see it as an opening, latch onto it and examine it from every angle... but this isn't about him, for once. "I understand the difference. And I'm glad I was able to do that for you... I think... but the part that you keep ignoring is that I—," she gestures vigorously to the center of her chest, still stupidly desperate to get through to him. " _I_... was miserable."

Todd groans and drops back onto the bed, flexes his bare feet, throws an arm over his eyes.

"Are you listening to me?" she says. "I wasn't miserable before I married you, I was miserable after I married you. There's only one conclusion I can draw based on the available evidence: being married to you makes me miserable! And you want me to go back to that?"

He's quiet under his arm.

"Do you want me to be miserable, Todd?!"

"Geez, Delgado," he wails, flopping on the bed like seal. "You're like a marching band and a fleet of garbage trucks all rolled into one. How can I get any sleep with all this racket?"

She barks a laugh devoid of any humor. What on earth is she hoping... that he'll see the light and transform before her eyes? Yes, of course she is, as always. She knocks a fist into her head. _"Idiota! Soy echando aqua al mar!"_

He glances up. "You're doing that salsa-speak again. What're you—,"

"—I said this is pointless!" She strides to the door, dignity and self-control in shreds and fluttering around her like dead leaves. He _attacked_ her! Assaulted her right there on that sofa! She should have called the police, nailed his ass then and there... but no, she had to _care_...

"Hey, where you headed?" he calls.

"Anywhere you aren't. Just go to sleep, Todd." Her hand is on the doorknob, turning, but it won't open.

"Nah, you gotta stay."

"Todd!" she cries shrilly and cringes. He's making her shrill, making her crazy. She's _free_ , she reminds herself... and Andrew is down at the bar—loving, kind, _sane_...

"Seriously, Delgado. We're doing our thing and it's kind of fun, right?"

She pulls the knob again, harder, but it stays shut, she stays trapped. "FUN? This is fun?!" So shrill. When did she get so shrill? She wheels around to find him sitting up on the bed, cross-legged, hair flowing over his broad shoulders, wide-eyed and earnest as can be among white ruffled pillow shams.

"I did say _kind of_ _fun_..."

She's notices that she's trembling, feels like a small boat pitching in a hurricane. Where did all this emotion come from? Only minutes ago, everything was clear; she was a competent grown-up with a plan. Now she feels hysterical, utterly at a loss, can't even operate a door. She drops back against it and tries to remember how to breathe.

"I can't—," she begins weakly.

"That's because the deadbolt's on," he says.

Her eyes slide over and see the ghost of his long fingers on the lock... but that's not what she's referring to.

"I mean _you_. This. I don't... I don't have the energy to keep this up."

"So stop," he says, sounding almost concerned about the toll this is taking on her wellbeing. "Just give up. Stop fighting."

Just give up? Stop fighting? She starts to laugh. But really... how would that feel? She closes her eyes, dizzy from alcohol, body swaying in the spinning room... and tries to focus, to imagine. She's been fighting so strenuously and for so long... first to get him to open up... and now to simply keep herself from going back to his insanity. Getting involved with Andrew was supposed to help... so was hiring Nora Gannon as her attack dog... but Todd just won't go away. And it's his refusal to go away, the tease of what that might mean coupled with the way he withholds himself from her—the riddle of him and his bottomless pain—that's what's keeping her hooked. That's what's driving her crazy. She knows it's her own fault, her own nature—she's gotta have her answers, and he stubbornly refuses to give her any—so she's built him up into this brooding, darkly erotic figure, her own personal Heathcliff...

She hazards a glance at him; he's wounded, yes... guarded, yes... tucked safely inside the armor of his tailored suit. But he's just a man, not a Gothic anti-hero... especially not now that he's done his signature 180-degree pivot and is watching her openly, harmlessly, so rational and amiable... and he's dispensing advice that's actually pretty good.

_Give up... stop fighting..._

"I'll stop if you'll stop," she says, noticing a sudden flush of warmth in her body. _Madre de Dios_ , not now. Not after everything he's done. You're _free!_ He's beyond crazy, desperately needs sleep. Don't complicate things...

She shouldn't have mixed all that booze...

"Me stop?" He picks absently at the bedspread. "Nah... I don't know how to stop. Not if I want something." His hazel eyes move slowly over her body, head to toe. From another man, it would be a sexy appraisal. But with a flash of insight she realizes that what Todd is doing is sizing up an opponent; he's trying to anticipate her next move... and he's plotting his own.

Just how many steps ahead is he...?

"God, you're good at this," she gasps, genuinely appreciating how expertly he's been playing her, keeping her as confused and off balance as she would try to keep a hostile witness. All those months together in the penthouse... he must have been paying close attention to her after all.

"I'm good at a lot of things," he says quietly.

She gapes at him for a moment, another flush heating her body... but she blinks it away. She has to remember who she's dealing with. That tone has been used on her, with varying degrees of success, since she was a teenager. There's no way Todd would go there.

She cocks her head. "You mean like ridiculing employees and churning out sleazy headlines?"

"Tip of the iceberg, Téa."

And he gives her a slow smile then that takes her breath away. It's brand-fucking-new, that smile, never before seen, and so teasing, so intimate and full of lewd implications that it makes her crotch sizzle, makes her weak in the knees. Makes her _feel_ too much—frustration most of all. If he could only stay this way—beautiful and provocative, almost accessible, not nuts, not scary—and if he would only follow through on his innuendoes, she'd dump Andrew, fire Nora, and go home to him in a heartbeat. But he won't. He can't.

Goddamn him...

What exactly is he going for here?

"Oh, Todd...," she huffs a small, sad laugh. "You can talk such a good game..."

She moves away from the door, unsteady on her feet, leans a hip on the sofa. His eyes are on her; something hot in his expression makes her self-conscious. "Speaking of games," she says and clears her throat. "I'm surprised you conceded earlier. I must say—"

"—Nope, uh-uh, Delgado." He shakes his head emphatically, hair flying.

"Oh, come on, I won! You said so yourself!"

"Nope. Flag on the play."

"What?!"

"Illegal formation. Not enough players on the field."

She crosses her arms firmly. "That's only called against the offensive line," she says... and at his stunned expression, she adds, "Four brothers... two Jets fans, two Giants fans. It got ugly."

"Okay...," he purses his lips, grudgingly impressed. "Okay, that's true." He hesitates, takes time choosing his next words. "But I was pretty damned... offensive before, right? And I wasn't all there... you said so yourself..."

She follows his eyes to the sofa she's leaning against, looks down at the cushions and remembers his rough handling of her. But she doesn't want to go back there. She wants to stay in this moment, in the crackle of their sparring, in the rose glow of sunset spilling across the bed, making the gold strands in his long, thick hair spark like filaments...

Her brother Del appears her mind—

_Cuidado, Téita... use that pretty head..._

Always the voice of reason when she's about to be stupid.

_Sí, cuidado... be careful... you know your nature, you know your weaknesses..._

Yes, she knows. All too well. With a mighty and painful effort to tighten the lid on this thing before it escapes and wreaks havoc, she says, "Fine, Todd. I accept your argument. We'll continue this in the morning." She straightens up, relieved, like she's off the case. "Now get some sleep."

But as she's about to run, Todd's voice comes to her, soft and low. "Maybe I don't want to sleep," he says. "Maybe I want... to talk about football."

Her eyes slam on him, chest tightening. He's watching her hard from the middle of that big bed. She has to leave, right now, go down to the bar, find Andrew and not come back, never come back...

She grips the sofa with both hands, nails digging in, pulls a deep breath... because even Del can't talk her out of the stupid now. She needs this to happen, needs to have this man—once, _just once_ —to get her questions answered, to flush this nonsense out of her system. She can keep emotion out of it... she has in the past. And if he's offering what she thinks he's offering...

_He's setting you up again, Téita..._

There's only one way to find out.

"Okay, Todd," she says. "We'll talk about... football."

He looks suddenly hunted, like he hadn't expected her to take the bait.

"And who's winning our game, in your expert opinion?" she says. Her voice has dropped an octave—it's not intentional, but instinct is a powerful thing.

Todd hesitates, eyes sprinting around the room before settling back on her. "Tied, give or take."

"That's generous of you. But you said ties aren't allowed..."

"I said nobody quits 'til somebody wins, Delgado." He seems wide awake now, hasn't slipped away into his own world for awhile... maybe it's safe, maybe this isn't selfish of her, and irresponsible and foolhardy and doomed...

"Speaking of playing offense...," she says. "Calling me out on my wedding ring... that was a good move. A surprise attack."

"Yeah, you pretty much got sacked on that one," he says, smoothing his hair back with both hands, rolling his shoulders. "But you left yourself open. Admitting that you and Andy haven't gotten all pelvic was—"

"—Stupid."

"A fumble," he corrects, and scoots back against the headboard. He stretches out his long legs, crosses them at the ankles like he's settling in for the night. "You gave it the old college try, Delgado, but you just couldn't recover the ball, so to speak."

"But you did," she says. "And you ran it back."

"Recovered some lost yardage, yeah."

She pushes off from the sofa, still unsteady but more confident that she hasn't misjudged his mood. She lowers her chin, looks up through her lashes and moves toward the bed.

"And tell me... are you in scoring position?"

He stiffens, eyes widening, doesn't answer.

She's not sure which she's enjoying more: this metaphor and all its possibilities, or the cornered look on his face. "Hmm, not sure, Todd? Okay, then... how's your passing game...?"

He glares at her and works his jaw. "Are we really doing this?" he says tightly.

"You suggested the topic."

He grunts, mutters like he's having trouble settling on a retort, so she waits him out... and just admires him as she drifts toward the bed. His mouth is moving with unvoiced thoughts, tongue slipping out to wet his lips... so full, so pouty and just plain indecent, whether he's sneering or suppressing a smile. She imagines how his hair would feel, spilling through her hands... and would he close his eyes at the sensation? Her gaze is drawn by movement... flares of red rose skipping over the white bedspread—light reflected by his own wedding ring as his long, elegant fingers scrub nervously over his face and smooth down his goatee. She imagines him there in that field of white, stretched on his back, naked, languid, waiting for her. He's never let her see his body—a glimpse of a forearm now and then, a tantalizing bit of chest when a button has slipped open...

Unbearable heat is building inside her. She can't remember what she was so upset about earlier... doesn't want to...

"Okay, fine," he says finally, startling her. His voice is gruff, his tongue running behind his upper lip. "Passing's more your play, right Delgado? That and... rushing." He turns away from her eyes, finds a pillow, punches it into submission behind his back, crosses his arms tightly over his chest. "You know me. I'm way better at blocking."

She reaches the bed, drapes herself around one of the carved wooden posts. "Can't fall back on defense all the time, Todd. You'll never score." She laughs lightly at his exaggerated eye roll. "Come on... we're tied. What's next?" She knows it's all so cheesy, but it feels _so good_...

He clears his throat, picks at a nonexistent thread on his jacket. "Well, you've seen my playbook, Delgado. You know what's next." His withdrawal is so typical it's almost endearing, and she would make it easy on him, easy on both of them, and stop this... if he showed any signs of actually wanting her to.

"Ordinarily, I'd say you'd run, but I think your playbook is out of date." She feels warm as honey in the sunshine. "In fact...," she unwraps herself from the post, drops her eyes, toes off her shoes and crawls up onto the mattress at the foot of the bed. "I think that now we're playing a different game entirely..."

She moves slowly on her hands and knees, giving Todd plenty of time to do whatever he'll do, prepared for rejection, insanity, vicious insults... she handled it when he threw her out into that snowstorm, she can handle anything. Right now, she's basking in anticipation, heat, the sensuality of the moment. He raises his knees as she advances, so tense he's vibrating... and even though he's flattening himself against the headboard like cornered prey, he's visibly aroused—breathing shallowly, his face flushed, lips parted... eyes soft, dilated and fixed on her mouth—just like those few minutes in the bar before everything went to hell.

"Delgado...," voice low, equal parts warning and invitation.

"Shhh," she says, inches from him now, impeded only by the wall of his upraised knees. His eyes dart away, return to her mouth, dart away again.

"Poor Todd, such a battle," she murmurs and rocks forward on her hands until her lips are less than an inch from his. "Why not take your own advice? Just stop fighting."

He freezes, doesn't respond but doesn't shove her away, either. Téa takes a breath, takes a chance and leans in tentatively. She slides her right cheek along his, barely touching, but close enough to feel the intimate, masculine heat of him. She gently licks the smooth raised skin of his scar, and his startled, ragged hiss is like music in her ear. He doesn't pull away.

His scar. She barely notices it anymore, but maybe when he thinks of himself, looks at himself, it's all he can see. Probably not smart to remind him of his past before they've even begun, but if he is going to reject her, it might as well be now...

_Alive, right?_

He's been saying that to her like an accusation... but she is alive, wildly alive in this moment of suspension between yes and no... feeling so much, her senses filled with the details of him: the warm, exotic scent of sandalwood, the taste of salt and the acid tang of his aftershave on her tongue, his soft facial hair tickling her jaw...

He may go away now, sink into his head the way he's been prone to do this evening. But she wants him _here_ , with her.

"Are you kind of dreaming now, Todd?" she whispers, half giddy because he's _letting her do this._

A sharp exhale, a soft, stunned laugh, the heat of it bathing her throat. And she's shocked to get an actual answer...

"Must be."

"Good dream or bad dream?"

"Uh... different," he grunts. "Anything different is good..."

She rocks back again; she wants to see his face, any small traces of emotion. His eyes are closed, lips right there, waiting for her... not retreating, not curling into a snarl. She pauses to prolong the moment—there's only one first kiss, after all—to enjoy the warmth of his breath, to tease and let the energy build up between them, their mouths so close... and she gasps when he's the one to give in first, with gentle lips that barely touch hers. She holds still, her heart pounding at this astonishing victory, half afraid of scaring him off, and just accepts whatever he wants to give her.

And it doesn't seem like much at first. He brushes his barely parted lips over hers, with little more pressure than a whisper, then again, but each time there's more electricity... and each time it feels like a spring is coiling more tightly in her gut. She shivers when she feels his fingertips on her cheeks, holding her in place while his mouth continues to tease, sending small shockwaves through her body... and maybe it's another one of his games...

Finally, it's too slow for her. After months of waiting, she's impatient, beyond ready and needs more. She can't help but lean in and sink her tongue between his lips, into the wet-hot softness of his mouth, so forbidden for so long. She flushes hot when he responds with a low, vibrating moan that she feels in her core, and she grabs for his hair while she can, before he realizes what's happening and shuts her down. She's had to stop herself from touching his hair a thousand times, but now she _can_ and she glories in the silky softness, smooths her palm down its length, reaches for the back of his neck and pulls him close, mouth locking on his, dizzy with the sensation of his tongue boldly tangling with hers.

She feels pressure on her shoulder, a pushing away that breaks the kiss, and a sob rises in her throat because here comes the rejection, _goddammit!_... but he's just unfolding himself, straightening his legs to create space for her. He takes her hips, hands warm and firm through the fabric of her dress... and he's actually trembling as he lifts her, positions her so her thighs are straddling his. She tries to meet his eyes, but he's angling for her mouth again, finds it quickly, and his kiss is deeper, hungrier, creating ruthless little tremors that sweep her vulva, make her shudder and press herself down on him. She's definitely drunk now, delirious. So many months of wanting him, aching for this, that she's primed, so wet he could slide inside with barely a push, so aroused he could make her come with just the right sound...

_Puta... slut... whore..._

God, no, not those sounds. She winces as the ugly words attack her mind the way they do on those nights she lies in her bed, touching herself, thinking of him... words that swarm and sting like insects, words whispered in doorways when she was young, too young to understand the meaning, but not too young to feel the impact. Words shouted in the street to shame women who give themselves to men, women who want men, women like her... women like her mother...

_Puta... slut... whore..._

And what does that make her now, panting and half insane with wanting this man, despite everything he's done to her, everything she's promised herself...

She can't let that in, won't...

Almost angrily, she shoves her hands into his jacket to push it back over his shoulders, to push the words away... she needs to get at skin, to get at him and lose herself, but his eyes are hard, dark under his brow and he resists her, shrugs her off and pushes up the hem of her dress instead, cups her ass, pulls her snug against him... and even through his trousers she can feel his erection—thick, long, perfect. Words disappear then, and judgements, and she just _feels_ him, grinds down on his cock and rocks, and when he digs his fingers into her flesh, she's not sure if it's to stop her or encourage her. So she stops, trembling. He's so tense... she can feel it penetrating her like a cold wind and she holds her breath, willing him to continue, willing but not demanding...

"Delgado," he whispers, rough, strained... and a small, defeated groan rises from his chest. But he lifts his hips, pushes up gently, like he's testing himself. His eyes are anxious—they hold hers for a long, heated moment, then close slowly, the light irises disappearing like the sun behind clouds. Téa isn't sure what it means, is hesitant to respond... but when he wraps his arms around her waist and begins a slow, rhythmic rocking, she shrieks for joy inside, silently thanks Jesus and all the saints because, yes, _he wants this_... and with a cry, she's off like he fired a starter pistol, rocking against him shamelessly, meeting him thrust for increasingly powerful thrust, spreading her legs wider to mold herself to the shape of him through her silk panties. A roaring has begun in her head, a mix of alcohol, excitement, disbelief... it doesn't drown him out as they move together, but strangely seems to amplify the sounds he's making... low, open-mouthed gasps... grunts of effort... the sharp groan when she tips her pelvis a certain way. Each sound penetrates her, draws her deeper inside herself and closer to him...

And then, with no warning, he seems to detonate beneath her. He tears his hands from her hips and shoves them into her hair, snarls, _"Fuck yeah,"_ and pulls her head back. Then his mouth is everywhere, biting her jaw, her ears, tongue running wet and hot over her throat... then he locks on and sucks hard, his breathing ragged and damp on her sensitive skin, teeth raking, hands twisting in her hair, hips bucking erratically...

Incredibly, he seems to be losing control of himself. It's deeply erotic to Téa, to be the instigator and focus of this frenzy... but a thought penetrates her sex fog—that this may be too much for him, too soon, that maybe they should slow down. But it's like a foreign language, impossible to fathom and she dismisses it in favor of the shock of pleasure/pain as he drops his head and bites her nipple through the thin fabric of her dress.

He stops, pulls his hands from her hair and growls, _"Get this off."_ He finds the zipper at her back, tears it down and together they wrestle the dress over her head, throw it on the floor and then he's a tornado, seems crazy with need, hands ripping at her bra, freeing her breasts, his manicured nails shining on her glistening skin... and then his teeth and tongue go to work on her nipples, an exquisite torment that quickly becomes painful, and she flinches, hisses, digs her hands into his hair to control him, to push him away... but not too far, because she's overjoyed by his wildness, needs every desperate thing he has to give. She's soaking wet with it, vulva pulsing as he grinds up hard... his fingers like iron on her hips, holding her still...

After a few more forceful jerks he's frantic; with a hoarse cry his head pitches forward and he shoves a hand down between their bodies. She lifts up to give him room to free and grab himself, and her hand is there, too, trembling, pulling aside her thin wet panties, her knuckles grazing his shaft... and then he's hot and rigid at her opening. She pushes down hard through the burn, desperate to get him inside her, and he howls as she engulfs him—an involuntary, primal sound that makes her clench him like a vise, makes her break out in a hot sweat and grab his lapels for support. He stretches her, almost painfully, and she should wait to adjust to him but she can't wait, has to move, her mind exploding because he's inside her, _Todd is inside her._ Joyous laughter ripples out from her as she begins to ride him, and he feels so fucking good, thrusting up powerfully, filling her. But he's controlling her movements—one of his hands is clamped on her hip, the other is gripping the back of her neck—and if she weren't so lost in euphoria, if she could only focus she would see his eyes, burning, devouring every expression on her face until he can't keep them open anymore, overwhelmed by sensation...

"Oh... oh, _FUCK—_ "

And that's the sound she needed—so helpless, raw and real. She shudders, wraps an arm around his head, presses her mouth into his hair and drops a hand between her legs to stroke herself. He's loosened his grip enough that she can change the angle of her hips and each thrust now rubs an exquisite streak of fire inside her. _"Yeah oh fuck yeah that's it,"_ he's whispering between his groans, his eyes hot and intense on hers, and ultimately it's that—not his sounds, but his eyes—that makes her wail and explode, writhing like a captured animal on top of him...

When she starts to come down—still gasping, hips stuttering—he's motionless, his face a mask of tension. She knows that look. He's struggling to control himself. She leans her trembling body back to see what he looks like at peak arousal—such a private moment, so deeply erotic. Despite her dreams and fantasies, she'd never really expected to see him this way—his flawless skin flushed and glistening with sweat, his lips red and swollen, parting with hot, shallow breaths... fighting, fighting... he was so close but he caught it in time—he almost came. The thought shatters her, takes her to the edge again, but not over, not quite... because a knot of complicated emotions has caught her off guard and is threatening to erupt. But she stuffs it down, because there's no place for that here. That's not what this is about...

She runs a finger over his parted lips... the finger she used to stroke herself, still wet. His eyes fly open, lock into hers, then close again as he curls his tongue around her finger, draws it into that impossibly soft mouth of his and tastes her. She stares, mesmerized by his absorption and by a change in his face, an easing, like something deep inside is loosening in a kind of surrender. Todd, so guarded and masculine, surrendering to pleasure... to _her_... and her body responds to the idea with no help from her, and she convulses with an orgasm so powerful it clamps her down on him, a white-hot rhythmic pulsing that forces a string of Spanish curses from her mouth.

He reacts to it violently, his hands slapping around her thighs like iron restraints, preventing any escape as he stops fighting his own need and he thrusts up, rams himself deep, impaling her. He eases back, then thrusts up again, and again, relentlessly, his fingers hard and damaging, tangled in her flesh, and Téa grits her teeth, hangs onto his lapels and fastens tear-filled eyes on him, drinking in every moment of his building orgasm—his face slick with sweat, neck arching back, the beautiful cords straining, and his mouth is open and yielding, so obscenely soft when the rest of him is granite now. She feels like she's moaning away her soul when she lowers her head, sinks her tongue into that mouth...

...and that simple act seems to break him, to destroy whatever tenuous control he has left. He surges to his knees, dumping her onto her back, grabs her throat with one hand, slams the other into the mattress to support his weight and he fucks her ruthlessly, eyes glittering and wild above her, his hair swaying like a mane in the wind. She knows she's completely at his mercy, that he's lost, driven by a ferocious, long-suppressed need... and she's with him every step like a rider with a crop... urging him on with bucking hips and clawing hands, giving as good as she gets... needing to prove to him that she can take it, needing him _not to regret this, ever_. He drops down hard on top of her, mindless of his weight, and she clings to him, glorying in his strength as he drives inside her until finally his body goes rigid and with jerking shudders and a deep, stunned roar, he comes... sending her into a frenzy. With every ounce of strength, she pushes him upright again, climbs on top and rides his cock at a breakneck pace, dizzy with the helpless sounds she's forcing from him, devouring the open torment on his face, rubbing herself until she cries out and explodes, pulsing wildly around him and taking him even higher, his body quaking, his hands grabbing for her anywhere, everywhere... and finally falling weakly to his sides. And she keeps milking him, taking his last shattered gasps to keep for herself.

A sort of... souvenir...

###

Todd isn't moving. Téa doesn't want him to move. Panting, exhausted, she collapses onto his slack body and rests against his thudding heartbeat. The buttons of his vest are cold on her bare chest, his breath is ruffling her hair. She's dazed, is barely conscious for long, slow minutes... until her thigh begins to cramp. He grunts as she slides up and off him with wet sounds, her legs shaking. She rolls, flops down by his side, not bothering to adjust her twisted bra and underwear.

The roar in her mind has faded and now she can hear her brother Del's voice, repeating one phrase loud and clear...

_Well, Téita, you finally got what you wanted..._

Yes. And now she should walk away.

She laughs at herself, silently, humorlessly. As if she could _possibly_ walk away after that... as if she could possibly _walk_ after that. As if one taste would be enough. As if a few answers wouldn't give rise to a thousand more questions. _Idiota_. Her capacity for self-delusion is almost as great as Todd's...

_Well, you finally got what you wanted..._

_Puta... slut... whore..._

She whimpers out loud. Is that what he'll think, when the glow fades and he realizes how brazen and aggressive and _crazed_ she was? Is that what he's thought all along, just like the others...?

_Puta... slut... whore..._

She shoves the words away, but they don't go far... like the memory of boys lounging outside her uncle's bodega, voices barely out of childhood, snickering, taunting... _Oyé, Téita, you so hot,_ just like your mama... _como tu madre,_ _you want it, putita, you want it bad_... and she would bite her lip, stare at their cuffed jeans and heavy boots because she hadn't yet learned how to fake the dignity it took to meet their eyes...

 _Well, Téita,_ _you finally got what you wanted..._

Did she ever. Her body is still vibrating, trembling with sweet flutters and tiny aftershocks; but with each passing moment small aches and pains begin to emerge, like rocks under a retreating tide. Her hips, throat and breasts are sore, vagina feels inflamed. He was hard on her. She was hard on herself. She was probably hard on him, too, but she won't ask him because, based on his breathing, he's fallen asleep.

Well, that was the point of him staying, after all. And she's glad he's asleep... he needs rest and she needs time to sort things out for herself and not have to worry about him and his no-doubt fragile and unfathomable state of mind. She's much more clear-headed now, tipsiness is gone, replaced by a dull headache. She scans herself, takes an inventory of the emotions she'd struggled to keep at bay during... the act.

Euphoria... that was through the roof but is fading now, much more quickly than she'd imagined. She was afraid she'd be draping herself all over him like a deflowered virgin for at least an hour.

Vindication... absolutely. And she cringes at the harshness of the feeling. But it's true; she finally nailed the elusive bastard, and he didn't reject her at the last second or disappear into himself, or hurt her. She knows that all were distinct possibilities in one or both of their minds. And if she ever doubted that he wanted her or that she could please him—and she did doubt, plenty—that's been exploded to rubble.

But mostly, and most strangely, is this... rage. She's almost shaking with it and it's coloring everything else, ruining her lonely afterglow. Most unexpected. She should be delirious, overjoyed—she freaking _just had sex with Todd_...

Maybe she's just in shock.

She rolls onto her side to look up at him in the deepening purple twilight. He's slumped back against the headboard, head lolling to one side, face half-shadowed by his veil of hair, eyes closed... dead to the world but for his steady, quiet breathing. And still safe in the armor of his tailored suit. Amazing how he managed, despite her efforts, to get through the whole thing without losing a stitch—while she's mostly naked.

So typical, so emblematic.

Except. Her eyes travel swiftly from his face down to his penis—heavy, glistening, but at ease now, resting in a nest of dark hair between the open jaws of his zipper. He would be mortified to be so exposed and vulnerable, but she didn't get to see him _during_... and this may be her only chance. She leans down close, with the same intense wonder she always feels when confronted with one of these strange organs. And there it is—his soft, unassuming, circumcised flesh—the source of so much angst and misery for him. For men in general, of course, it's a source pleasure, insecurity, entitlement, frustration, power...

For Todd, it may be some or all of those things... but it also seems to be a curse. A burden.

A weapon.

But it looks so guileless and innocent, sleeping there. So much significance attached to it, so much metaphorical weight to carry around that she feels almost sorry for it. She reaches out, lets her hand hover a moment without touching, fascinated that it could grow to fill her so completely, stretch her until she saw stars. Her vulva reacts to the visceral memory of him, the way he devoured her, impaled her, his unfiltered sounds of pleasure... God, it was _good_... and to see him so raw and unleashed... to see him in the grip of orgasm, to _do_ that to him...

She's powerfully aroused again, squeezes her pelvic floor, feels the ripple. Her fingers are still poised above his penis; she wants to stroke him, wake him, have him roll on top of her, push himself inside her with that _moan_ of his...

But he might slap her away, spit something savage...

_Puta... slut... whore..._

She clamps her eyes shut, steadies herself and removes her hand. She's not quite ready to deal yet, with whatever is coming.

She looks up into his face again. He seems guileless and innocent, too, sleeping there, snoring lightly now. It's erotic to see him _sated_ , when he's usually so tense... prowling every room that tries to contain him, even when he's standing still. Everything about him is erotic to her, always has been—the myth, the paradox of him had teased her imagination long before she'd agreed to their _deal_...

Her gaze lingers on his parted lips, moves to the bruise on his left cheek, to the hook-shaped scar on his right... and to the other scar scoring his left eyebrow, where no hair grows. She'd meant to touch it when she'd had the chance—a silly impulse, a magical idea she's always had that if he'd just let her touch him, if she could just lay hands on his wounds, she could heal him, ease his suffering...

But there'd been no room for sentiment. Their... encounter... had been purely physical. He'd kept himself locked tightly away, just as she had—but she knows him now, in a way she didn't an hour ago—the tastes of his skin and sweat, the intense sensuality of his kiss, the subtle and not-so-subtle ways he uses his considerable strength... the expression of despair on his face the instant he loses control. And she knows now that his pain is as much a part of him as his natural scent—inextricable... fundamental.

And she blushes to think that he knows her, too. So many things she can no longer hide from him, or deny... probably so many things she herself is unaware of...

They're in an entirely new world together.

All at once the emotions she'd exiled come roaring back like a tsunami, and she's laid bare, defenseless, her heart crushed by ache. She longs for Todd to open his eyes in the aftermath of all this and look down at her with love and joy and trust, to gather her into his arms and whisper to her all about his demons, his fears... to let her in. And she understands vividly now the source of her intense rage...

Those things will never, ever happen. Instead, he'll blow up this new world of theirs; he'll shut down, punish her, hate her, use what he's learned against her. He may not even mean to, but he will just the same.

Because he doesn't know how to do anything else.

And, on some level, she took from him something he wasn't ready to give her. Why else would he have stayed so far away, even while he was moving inside her? If he had trusted her enough to come closer... even one small step closer during that desperate, wild fucking... she might have had the courage to let herself love him openly and without reservation. To let herself stay.

_Well, you finally got what you wanted... didn't you?_

She rolls onto her back, flooded with profound grief. Part of her says to wait, see what happens, maybe the world really has shifted on its axis and all their problems will be solved by one fantastic fuck, just as she'd always stupidly, naïvely imagined. He'll wake up and be, what... whole? Loving, open... cured?

And there's something else, something she'd forgotten that makes her skin crawl—the cold malice he's capable of, the brutality just beneath the surface... the madness. She'd conveniently set that aside, chose to ignore it... for the simple reason that she wanted, no _needed_ , to fuck him.

_Puta... slut... whore..._

A memory flashes... of her mother. She's tearing off a white silk blouse and bruises are vivid on her arms and stomach. Her eyes are shining and frantic, she's making desperate sounds, rushing into the arms of Téa's father. She's melting with him onto the bed as Téa watches from the hallway, the view of them narrowing, then vanishing as their bedroom door swings slowly closed. It frightened Téa, even at six-years-old, that her mother wasn't afraid of her father's fists—he seemed to have something she needed... a strange _power_ over her. And as Téa grew up, she understood that power and those shining, frantic eyes. She realized she shared her mother's nature, her ability to disappear into passion... and she was shamed for it by her family, by boys and men who couldn't match her... and most of all by herself. So she learned to dilute that nature... to say _maybe_ when she wanted to say _hell_ _yes_ , to be demure and docile even when her body was on fire... and finally she suppressed it entirely and chose to focus her energy on getting out—changing herself and changing her life so she would never end up in a basement apartment at the mercy of lust and a jealous man who would beat her on a drunken whim...

But it's all come roaring back like a starving bear from hibernation... because of Todd. Because of this beautiful, complex, damaged, challenging man... and the intoxication, the _need_ for him is like a drug now—stronger than self-respect, maybe even stronger than self-preservation. For the first time, instead of condemning her mother, Téa understands her... why she stayed as long as she did... what it took to leave...

Téa grits her teeth and silently shakes herself. No. Téa is _not_ her mother. She may understand her, but that doesn't mean she has to identify with her and her slavish weakness. She doesn't have to repeat her mistakes. Téa is strong—she can leave, she _will_ leave. Now. Shower, dress, get out before Todd wakes up and confirms her worst fears, says or does something vile and unforgivable again. Or, God forbid, things eventually devolve into violence, like they did between her parents. She needs to find Andrew, fly to Santo Domingo and get a quickie divorce—why the hell hadn't she thought of that before?—and put all this behind her. Boring isn't bad. Predictable is _safe_. Feeling is the problem. Feeling—

"You sure do cry a lot, Delgado."

Her body jerks at the sound of the rough, sleepy voice above her.

 _"Mierda,"_ she gasps, swipes at her cheeks, is surprised to find wetness there. But at the same moment she's overcome by an almost childlike sense of hope—that addicted, naïve part of her wants so desperately to stay. It says to look up at him, give him a chance, give them both a chance and see what he's feeling in this raw state, before there's time for thought, regret, blame...

She takes a deep breath...

Suddenly the mattress quakes beneath her and Todd is snarling, moving fast, arms flailing, long legs scrabbling, hips up... and when the commotion dies down his pants are zipped, penis safely stowed away. He darts a pained glance at her, runs his hands over his face.

"Fuck," he mutters and swings his legs away and over his side of the bed.

Her first instinct was to laugh companionably, sympathetically... but she was stunned into silence by the violence of his reaction. She shouldn't be surprised. She knew he'd feel exposed and vulnerable, and she should have... what, what could she have done, how could she have helped to welcome him gently into this new world...?

Maybe she can help him recover some dignity now.

"You slept a bit."

"I—," he starts, clears his throat. "Okay."

He sits there radiating anxiety, hands gripping the edge of the mattress like it's the edge of the world and he's trying not to fall off. And it's all about _him_ again... just as she knew it would be. Just as it always will be. Todd's pain, Todd's needs. Todd's... limitations...

She'll leave. She will, but she needs to know where things stand. She sits up, every bit as uncomfortable as he is but forcing herself to hide it. "I was... I was just going to get some water. Do you want some water?"

"Okay," he says hollowly.

She climbs off the bed, takes a step, stops short as wetness begins trickling down her inner thighs. She needs to clean up, but to reach the bathroom she'll have to go around to his side of the bed in her partially shredded underwear, thighs slick with him... and she's struck by paralysis. Ridiculous. She's been in this situation before—first time with a guy, things are weird, you both laugh it off. But this is _Todd_...

He must notice her stillness, swivels his head in her direction. He sits bolt upright.

"Oh... you want a robe? I'll get you a robe." He stands, takes a lurching step, looks around awkwardly in the dim light. "Is there a robe? Probably in here." He launches himself through the open bathroom door.

Téa gapes after him and his uncharacteristic display of chivalry. Most likely, he just wanted to get the hell away from her—at least this time he felt he needed a pretense. He doesn't turn on the light, but she can make out his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he takes the white robe from the hook on the back of the door. As she tries to get a grip on herself in his absence and think up something neutral to say, fast, she sees him suddenly reach up, grab the hook with one hand and hug the robe to himself with the other. He drops his head onto his raised arm, chest heaving. She thinks at first that his leg has fallen asleep again, or that he's finally been overcome by exhaustion. But this is different... he's struggling, in the grip of something powerful. She doesn't know how she knows, she just knows... and her own discomfort vanishes.

She deliberates for only a second before she adjusts what's left of her clothing and moves around the bed and into the bathroom. He turns his head away from her, but doesn't change position. She leaves the light off, lays a tentative hand on his back, feels a slight movement... it could be a flinch, it could be a shiver. She tries to laugh lightly, but it comes out as more of a croak.

"So... are you... as freaked out as I am?"

His voice is thick. "More."

"There you go again, making everything a contest," she says, allowing herself a sad smile.

He grunts a noise that could be a laugh, but keeps his face turned away. She doesn't move her hand, just lets it rest between his shoulder blades, on the soft wool of his jacket. She remembers how that softness felt beneath her thighs, against her breasts, wrapped around her body... and she's knocked sideways by a painful need to _not be alone in this_. She wills him to turn his head and look at her, _see_ her, say anything to acknowledge that a life-changing event has just occurred between them, and that he cares.

But she, of all people, knows the futility of willing him to not be himself.

He's silent, motionless but for a few small tremors, giving her nothing. She swallows a lump of grief and drops her hand from his back.

"Tap water okay?"

He draws a shaky breath.

"Any of that bottled stuff in the... uh... the..."

"Mini bar?"

"Yeah... whatever."

She reaches for the robe with both hands, feels a little better when he tugs it back for a second before letting it go. When she's safely out of the room and out of sight she stops, sucks in a deep breath and tries to steady herself, calm her heartbeat... and not hate him for fulfilling her expectations. But this is clearly rough for him—he's had no sleep, he's just done something he's fought against for a very long time... and he hasn't had as much time to get used to their new world as she has.

She pulls on the robe, starts across the room.

"None of that fizzy crap, Delgado," he calls.

She wants to smile, but can't. She prepares herself for the predictable—hostility, denial, withdrawal, possibly a bit of ridicule. But it's the unpredictable that has her feeling sick to her stomach. And Todd has been nothing today, if not unpredictable.

She makes her way to the cabinet... and tries not to think about her mother.


	5. Chapter 5

Todd hangs onto the hook with both hands, face cradled in the crook of his elbows, the soft wool of his suit still carrying the scent of Téa's skin. He breathes her in, slowly leans forward until the door clicks shut and he's in darkness, mind swimming, unable to latch onto anything solid but the memory of her soothing hand on his back... and then, too soon, it was gone ...

He's still reeling from the shock of waking up so exposed. He'd fallen asleep like a sated animal. Like a  _guy_ , dick out while he slept... Jesus you don't do that, you never do that, because people—

—dream images flash... paws and hot, sour breath in the night... gruff whispers, strangled moans...

He doesn't fight, lets them rise and fade on their own—because they're just dreams. Just dreams. And he doesn't have the energy to fight. Not his mind, not his needs, not her and everything she'll expect from him now...

The darkness reaches for him, familiar, tinged with fear and rage, and it's so hard to breathe because he's raw, and the possibility of betrayal seems very close. But the darkness is real; it's not in his mind, it's surrounding him in this small room. And this door is real, and the hook he's clutching with both hands is real...

So he can relax a bit, breathe, loosen his grip, let himself begin to feel...

He'd felt too much in those first few moments of closeness, of touching; so long without touch that he couldn't remember how to stay apart and he struggled not to get lost...

And some of her sounds, her cries... they reminded him, threatened to draw him away into blood dreams of Marty and others; but he stayed, could stay, as long as he kept her on the surface, didn't let her in...

And once she'd made it crystal clear that she didn't want intimacy, didn't want a fairy tale—that what she wanted was to  _get off_ —then it was easy to just let go, get out of his head and give in to the carnal demands of his body. Almost too easy to forget all about her and  _take_. But she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she seemed to like it rough, wanted him to let her have it—so he did, for the first time in years... and he isn't at all worried that he hurt her.

Because his body feels fucking fantastic—shaky, strained—but damn. Yeah. Like an uncorked bottle, energy flowing free, fast and hot...

He feels a little giddy, realizes what this means...

_He did it._

Walked right into the fire and no one got burned, no one got damaged, and he proved to her that he wasn't held back by CAN'T...

_You were never MAN enough..._

Ha! Take that, bitch!

He winces at the reflexive thought and focuses instead on the heat flooding his body at the memory of her hungry mouth, her satin skin surrounding him, moving on him... tight, wet and needing...

No, not a  _bitch_... not at all.

He feels better now, stronger, clearer, like he's emerging from a thick fog. He releases the hook, flicks on the light switch, blinks into the mirror. Suit's rumpled, hair's wild, mouth's a little swollen, but other than that...

Stupid that he thought he'd look different—like a prisoner who's done his time, newly freed and basking in sunshine after years locked in a dungeon; someone with a future, someone made better from all the time spent repenting. He'd expected all that to be visible somehow... because he  _did it_...

And he snorts a laugh. Now he'll have to reset his daily celibacy count to zero.

He usually slips the number into the box scores in the sports section, or sometimes he makes things up for his own black amusement; a little masochism with his morning coffee. Briggs had spotted the anomalies awhile back, sauntered into the office with a stack of clippings marked with a bold red pen.

"Something seems off at the sports desk, sir. Look, here, the winner of the Mid-Atlantic Skywriting Competition... the most Yogi Berra quotes in under 794 seconds? And here, under Fun Facts... I don't really think the average height of a Portuguese jockey is 8.13 feet."

"Typos, Briggs," Todd had grumbled, chewed his cheek to keep from grinning. "Go fire somebody."

And yesterday, in the Lawn Darts Championship, Pre-K Division, the East trounced the West 88 to 6, and Briggs never said a word.

886\. 886 days since Todd had been with a woman. He'd been perversely hoping he'd make it to 1000... such a nice round number. But now he'll have to start all over. Or maybe not...

Because the real win here is that Delgado's fucking divorce is off the table. He  _did it_ —he gave her what she wanted, and it was pretty damn good. And maybe he can keep doing it; as long as he's able to stay apart, not get attached emotional irrational insane...

He turns his face, notices the fresh bruise blooming on his left cheek where she'd slugged him earlier. Yeah, the sex had been a little rough, but she wouldn't have let him hurt her. Not really. She'd been a match for him, and if he'd gone too far, he's sure those solid little fists would have come out swinging. He watches a smile break over his face at the thought, at the affection he feels... then he laughs, and he looks so foreign to himself, so goofy, that he laughs harder until he hears a tap on the door.

"You okay in there?"

Would it shock her if he were to fling open the door, sweep her up and carry her to the bed? It would not shock him... and that shocks him.

_Jesus, Manning, get a grip. You only got laid, you didn't win a Pulitzer..._

"Give a guy a minute, Delgado," he calls, lets a bit of smile color voice. He's been inside her... maybe he should start calling her Téa...

God, she was amazing; so intense, explosive. He'd never felt so  _craved_  in his life. Even Blair—back when she was into him and he actually trusted her—often seemed to be in her head during sex, posing, working some hidden agenda, planning her next move... and he always had a vague notion that she expected gratitude afterwards. She was certainly never like Delgado—volcanic, stripped bare right down to her bones, with no pretense, no inhibitions, no agenda but pleasure... and  _having him_. So fucking hot...

"Would you mind speeding it up?" Téa is calling. "I have to—,"

He sucks in a deep, preparatory breath, runs his hands through his hair and pulls open the door to find her wide-eyed, flushed and so beautiful his chest aches. The term  _freshly fucked_  growls in his mind. He's suddenly terrified, mute, heart pounding in his throat.

She looks at the carpet, pulls the lapels of the snowy white robe into a tight fist at her throat.

"Thanks," she mutters, and ducks under his arm, outstretched to hold the door. "Water's on the table," she says, turns away...

And then he's alone in the bright hotel room, staring at the outside of the bathroom door. He realizes his mouth is hanging open, so he shuts it. He'd meant to say something clever, or complimentary, or even, God help him,  _sweet_ , but it never quite formed, never quite made it out into the world. He looks around, throat parched, sees the bottle of water sweating on the coffee table. She hadn't opened it, hadn't set out a glass... nothing  _friendly_. He crosses the room in two long strides, grabs the bottle, cracks it open, takes a few gulps. As his head is tipped back he notices that every single light in the room is on: the overheads, the table lamps, the wall sconces...

Like a punch to the gut, a memory snaps into focus—of turning on all the lights in his bedroom when he was a kid, when he was afraid, after the dreams had started; because he needed to see the monsters coming, and he needed to see the ceramic lamp in the shape of a football by his bed so he could count the stitches over and over and over... but it always went dark when the paws found him...

He flinches, stunned, shuts it down fast, but the residue of ancient terror echoes in his jaw and his wrists...

It hadn't occurred to him to wonder before how Téa might be reacting to their... encounter. He figured on joy, celebrations, front-page headlines, parades in the street. But she'd clutched the robe to her throat just now, wouldn't meet his eyes... he'd awakened to find her crying...

_Are you as freaked out as I am..._

And she turned on all these lights...

Of course.  _Of course_. He stares at each light in turn until his eyes burn, hears whispering in his ear, feels the tender caresses of self-loathing, of old fears—dark and bottomless—as they arise behind him, familiar and seductive as his one true lover. And effortlessly he sinks back into their embrace without question, because... of course. Téa saw him, felt his essential nature when he was inside her, and now she's afraid. And she turned on all the lights so she could see the monster coming, just as he had done so long ago. His face hardens, shoulders hunch; his brief moment of happiness—because that's what it was—snuffed out like a candle flame.

_You're not a man, you're a curse..._

He collapses onto the sofa, grief flaring.  _Oh, Téa_. Images come to him, specific, precious moments, and he reframes them as quickly as they arise: her cries and moans, her hands clawing his hair and shoulders, her back arching—that was not craving, not passion, not pleasure. It was revulsion and fear and pain. He had misread everything. And the hesitant hand on his back in the bathroom... not an attempt to comfort, but to placate... so he wouldn't hurt her again...

Oh Jesus.  _Jesus_...

He flashes suddenly on the dream, the one he'd been caught in earlier, when he'd held her down on this sofa, when he'd started to—

He gulps, fights for air. The bottle of water is wet, cold in his trembling hand and he rolls it over his forehead, takes another swig, caps it, twists, twists...

His rage had been so real, his need to regain control after his meltdown about Marty, after Téa had almost broken him with that stinking tender mercy of hers... and then he'd been pulled away into the dream, the recurring one of that blonde girl from his high school track team, back when... when he  _did things_... the sarcastic girl who wouldn't shut up. The dream hadn't been progressing as usual though; the setting and dialogue were all wrong, the surge of arousal too real, and he should have known... and when Téa's face finally broke through the haze and he saw genuine fear in her eyes...

No. He wouldn't have done that. Not to Téa.

But... did he? On that bed just now... when he gave himself over to the demands of his body...? He remembers her words from earlier...

_You hurt me, Todd, all the time. And you seem to keep finding new ways..._

He must have gone too far without even realizing it... but her solid little fists had not come out swinging to stop him. Why had she let him do it, let him hurt her...? He grips the bottle like a slender throat, fingers digging into the plastic. But he understands—sometimes you're too afraid to fight the monsters. And sometimes they're too big and strong and determined and there's just no point...

He surges up with a choked sob, hurls the bottle against the wall by the heavy oak cabinet. It hits with a crunch, bounces and rolls into the middle of the room, somehow intact. He glares at it, panting, hands fisted at his sides...

"Could have sworn that wasn't the fizzy kind."

A small, tight voice... Téa, standing by the bed.

He tastes bile, swallows it down and turns away, hands raking his hair. She's too bright to look at, swaddled in a white robe, luminous under the blazing lights like she's lit from within... and he watches from the corner of his eye as she walks over, picks up the bottle and replaces it on the coffee table. She straightens up slowly, gingerly, winces and presses a hand on her lower back, and Todd feels a wail gather in his chest, digs his fingernails into his palms. She hasn't even glanced at him. She turns her back and stares through the window at the rising city lights beyond, knots her fists into the lapels of the robe again.

Todd grits his teeth and braces for her tirade. He welcomes it, needs it like absolution... but she's silent. She sways slightly, chews her lips, eyes sliding toward him but not landing. He knows he hurt her, the evidence is everywhere, and she's supposed to scream at him like after the sofa... _incident_. She's supposed to rant, accuse, threaten him with banishment or life behind bars...

But all he gets from her is a radiating tension, a sense of expectation that gradually dissipates the longer she's silent. And she seems to be getting smaller and less vital, like she's disappearing before his eyes... hot embers fading to ash.

And he's mute, too, sick with grief, struggling to remember what he did, choking on all the questions and confessions and regrets and pleas trying to force their way out and clogging his throat... and it's too fucking bright in here with these fucking lights blinding him, burning his eyes—too many lights, too many monsters and he's being crushed by an old weight, his chest on fire...

"I need to get outta here," he rasps, takes a stumbling step toward the door.

She flinches; it's barely visible, but he sees it, it twists his gut and stops him. She nods slowly, face going pale.

"Right? I mean... look, Delgado, what happened," he stammers, has to say something though his throat feels like sandpaper. "That—that's not what I wanted. You know that."

He can't give her more than that—there's no excuse for whatever he did—but maybe it's enough. If only she weren't so fragile, so... gone. If only she would scream at him—why isn't she screaming at him? She's just nodding fast and pinching the bridge of her nose in that way she does when she's struggling not to cry. And just when it dawns on him that he might be missing something essential, he feels the ghost of her body straddling him, rocking, clinging to him with kisses so deep they drive away thought... and in the next instant it's different, she's resisting him, crying out in pain, her nails raking his scalp, shoving him away...

The conflicting images leave him reeling with confusion—which was it—both, neither...? One then the other? Did he hallucinate the whole thing? Or worse—did an old, bloody dream break through and make him  _do things_  to her without his knowledge...? Is that why he can't remember? An echo of her words rings in his head...

_You assaulted me. I was terrified, Todd! You were going to—_

He clamps his eyes shut, wheels toward the door, stops. He has to know what he did... but he can't ask, can't bear to hear the answer. And how can he ask, anyway, when you don't talk about the dreams or the lights or the monsters that live inside and out? No...no... it's too hot under the scorching lights... so fucking bright, like staring at the ceramic football lamp by his bed... Chicago Bears' navy and orange, counting stitches until it goes dark and he's choked by fear and disgust, choked by sour breath and the heavy weight pressing down, crushing him away...

He can't feel his body anymore, seems to be spinning in and out of dreams and is in danger of getting caught in that worst dream of all—the floorboards squeaking squeaking, snow melting under his cheek—and he sees hands, recognizes that they're his hands, reaching out to Téa of their own accord in a plea for help... but he forces them down again, can't touch her now. He imagines her cringing away, face filled with horror, finger pointing, slicing into his heart...

_You're not a man, you're a curse..._

_You're were never man enough, you're not a man, never man enough ..._

The words, a constant hum just below his conscious awareness, break through now, too loud as white fades to grey, and other voices are baying for him in the sinking darkness—mocking, screaming, crying—voices he once silenced with threats and fists and sweatbands... and blood dreams claw at him the way Téa clawed at him on that bed, trying to shred his protective armor, trying to get inside where no one is allowed... and he's trapped there, sweating, heart racing—an animal on the verge of panic, on the verge of lashing out to protect itself...

Through the darkness he can see her, Téa, incandescent in the bright room... but she isn't mocking him, or screaming or threatening... she's just standing there quietly, too quietly, shoulders slumped, arms wrapped tightly around her body... that body...

Adrenaline is pumping hard. He curls his empty hands to feel the contours of her hips... and then her convulsive heat is sinking down on him again and she's fucking him slowly, her moans loud in his head, sighs and sounds of pleasure—or lies to spur him on and get it over with...? Doesn't matter... he's getting hard, wants it,  _the high_ , imagines plunging into her, the hot flow of energy. He could just reach out, TAKE, like he's taken so many times before—

—and Jesus! It hits him like ice water. How could he think that way...  _now_? He knew he shouldn't do it, he knew it could never fucking work, warned her again and again, but he let her do it to him... let her convince him he could be  _better_...

"Todd...? Todd..."

Téa's voice rolls toward him like headlights in a fog, growing brighter, larger, cutting through the grey...

"Todd, don't run away."

He jerks his head around at the sound, looks down, realizes he's holding the doorknob. He doesn't remember walking over, reaching for it...

_That's what NOT IN CONTROL means..._

He stares at his hand, drops it to his side. Words repeat in rhythm to the pounding in his head...

_Not a man... Not a man... Not a man..._

"I suppose it's too much to ask what's happening...," she says.

He drops his head against the door. She fills his peripheral vision and her tension laps at him, that frustrated expectation again, like a crowd staring down a track, waiting for an overdue train. He wills a dream to come and take him away from here—Marty in her blood-soaked wedding dress, Starr cooing on the floor with a man's severed toe in her tiny hand—anything. At least they're familiar; he knows the drill. But Delgado is talking now, and there are thousands of ways she could eviscerate him, most of which he deserves, some he won't see coming at all...

"Can I at least ask why you threw that bottle?" she says into his silence.

It's such a what-the-fuck question that it startles him into honesty. "Too bright in here," he grumbles. He can practically hear her brow furrowing. He rolls his head, pivots his body toward the room, rams his hands into his jacket pockets and collapses back against the door. He finds a good spot on the carpet to stare at, and waits.

She pulls a long, deep breath, lets it out slowly and it ruffles his hair like a warm breeze. "Look, Todd... I know this is...," she pauses. He can tell she's scrolling through the thesaurus of her mind in search of the perfect label for this... this  _black hole_  he's dragged her into...

"It's awkward. Very awkward... for both of us, okay," she says almost timidly. "Not just you. We're both in new territory here."

_Awkward?_

She leans down, tries to catch his eye, but he's quaking inside, staring hard at that carpet, suddenly on guard. Hatred he can take, and threats and fists... but not this _vulnerability_ —

And a new thought jars him like a gunshot: It's an  _act_. It wouldn't be the first time she tried to manipulate him with a frail tone, that soft, trembling voice... in fact, it would explain everything; like why she's not screaming...

His gut twists. Oh shit, she's playing him again. She's fucking  _playing him_ , just like she did in the Palace Bar. He sets aside his grief, gets ready for combat—he needs to be sharp. She didn't get away with it then, no way is she getting away with it now.

Even though he deserves it.

 

###

When Téa had heard Todd laughing in the bathroom, her heart both leapt and sank. Todd...  _laughing_. It was a strange sound... not his usual sarcastic snicker or high-pitched whoop that signaled somebody else's downfall and humiliation. No, this was open, rumbling, joyful. And it scared the shit out of her. Her first thought was that he was laughing at  _her_ , at her sexual... performance. Or maybe that he'd put one over on her, that he'd won somehow... but no, he wouldn't have missed the chance to laugh about that right in her face. Then she rconcluded that he'd finally lost his mind, that having sex had pushed him over the edge and she'd go into the bathroom and find him perched on the ceramic pedestal sink like a gargoyle, head wrapped in toilet paper, acting out some bizarre delusion...

It seemed impossible to think that he might actually be happy about what happened between them... that he might be feeling _good_. No, to let herself believe that, however much she longed for it, was to risk yet another round of devastation. So she made up her mind to steel herself, to wait for irrefutable proof. The look on his face when he'd flung open the bathroom door was close; a moment of delight that almost made her throw herself into his arms... but that look was instantly swallowed by a blank disdain so typical that she had to get away and hide from the misery and chaos of this entire fucking day...

The mirror had been ruthless, pulled no punches. Her hair was a mess... tangled from his desperate, careless fingers, matted in the back from his relentless pounding as he'd held her hips in a vise-grip and drove himself into her again and again and again. Her once perfect eye makeup was smeared down cheeks still flush with fever heat. She opened her robe to find her chest, belly, thighs rubbed red and raw from the friction of his soft wool suit, bruises on her hips, bite-marks on her breasts and throat. Her vulva tingled at the sight, at the memory of him...

She cleaned herself, popped the birth control pill she'd started in case things heated up with Andrew—a few hours early, but God forbid she forget—brushed her hair, fixed her eye makeup, left the rest. No shower... not quite ready then to be rid of his scent, of his essence, of the evidence...

Freshly fucked, thoroughly fucked. Perfectly fucked.

In all ways.

She braced her hands on the sink, looked deeply into her eyes and into her tender, frightened heart, and she asked herself sincerely...  _what now, Téa Delgado Manning_?

 _Give him a chance, that's what now_ , came the reply. Tell him the truth, hope for a bit of truth in return, a bit of courage, a bit of sanity. That's what she'd decided... until he hurled that bottle of water against the wall.

And now his misery and regret are so vivid he may as well be spitting on her. It's only sheer masochism on her part, and her damned need for answers, that are keeping her from ordering him out... but she needs him to stay, needs to understand what went wrong... if he believes she forced him and he resents her, if she needs to apologize, if he's slipping away into dreams, if it's something else... 

Why he's glaring at her now like he hates her...

New world, indeed. In which absolutely nothing has changed.

###

"I need something from you, Todd," Téa says. "Do you hear me? Anything. Would you please at least look at me?"

And her plea convinces Todd that he's right... she's playing him. She's really pouring it on, too... she's got that quiver going in her voice, is summoning those ever-ready tears of hers. She almost sounds sincere. Fuck that. He works his jaw, presses his lips into a hard, defiant line.

"You won't even look at me...?" 

It's hard to stay combative in the face of such uncharacteristic  _smallness,_ even if it is phony _._ It makes his organs hurt, but he won't give her ammunition, reminds himself that he warned her over and over to leave him alone and she  _didn't,_ that it's her own damn fault she got hurt... 

He stabs a look at the bed.

"That's never gonna happen again," he says through gritted teeth, lips curling into a sneer he doesn't feel.

Her face flames red, delicate fingers fly up to pinch the bridge of her nose and halt the flow of tears. She says, very quietly, "I see."

"I never should have...," he mutters. "You knew I didn't want to, but you just had to push, Delgado..."

Her spine stiffens. "So you had to, what, Todd, punish me, humiliate me, hurt me? I expected something like it, and I thought I was prepared, but—," she runs out of gas, drops her eyes. "I was hoping you'd at least have the decency—"

"—To what, be  _gentle_  with you? That's the problem with hope, Delgado," he snarls to stifle a sob, because he was right...

_You had to punish me, humiliate me, hurt me... YOU HURT ME..._

And there it is, erasing all doubt. He was right... about the lights, about becoming the thing he hates, about everything. He can't look at her, closes his eyes and shrinks in on himself... wants to be as small as she was, as small as he feels, wants to disappear.

Her face softens and she bizarrely seems to grab onto his words like a lifeline. "What do you mean, Todd," she says. "Were you hoping for something, too?"

He pushes away from the door without a word. So sweet, so needy... so  _after_  something, but not a lifeline—a rope to hang him with. He brutalized her, and she found a way to use it, like she did after The Sofa Incident. He shakes his head, swallows hard, has to swallow again because there's a shitload of emotion that wants to come out. He should let her stick it to him. He should just let her.

_YOU HURT ME..._

He deserves it.

"Todd, please  _talk_  to me!"

But decades of self-preservation don't vanish in an instant. He wheels on her violently. "What, do you want an apology? 'Cause I can do that—I'm sorry, Delgado, that you wouldn't take NO for an answer. I'm sorry you kept pushing," he bellows, voice breaking. "How many times did I tell you to back off? But you just had to have it. Well, you got it. And now—,"

"—Todd," she tries to break in with her lawyer voice, brow creased, palms pressed together. "I'm not sure—,"

"—Shut up! You wanted me to talk, so I'm talking." He rakes his hands through his hair, claws at it like he wants to yank it out in chunks. "So what, are you gonna threaten me with court again? Call the cops? Haul me off to the looney bin? Then just do it already!" He's pacing, wired, frustrated because she's shaking her head, staring at him with this bullshit blank expression on her face. "Oh, cut the crap, Delgado. This whole thing is a set up."

Her eyes fly wide at that. "What are you talking about?"

"Like in the bar, trying to get me to buy into this lovely-dovey innocent act, trying to get me to lose it or whatever the fuck you're doing." He's flush with hatred at what he's saying, for believing it, hates her for making him go where he never should have gone.

"You've already lost it, Todd," she says darkly. "If you think—,"

"—What, that you'd sink that low? You've been dying to give it up to me for months, Delgado, and you want out of this marriage. I wouldn't put it past you to use your tight little—,"

"—Don't!" she shouts, both hands flying up. "Don't you  _dare_  finish that sentence, Todd. Don't you dare."

_Don't say my name... don't you dare say my name..._

And like clockwork, Marty appears in Todd's head as though summoned. Marty again, always Marty. She drags him away, bottomless hate flowing out of her like lava as she bends over Patrick Thornhart's body on the penthouse floor, finger pointing, slicing into his heart... and Todd is swaying, fighting for air and Téa is there, glaring so much outrage at him that it feels like razors in his skin. And she's laughing, bitterly, angrily; finally, gloriously  _angry_.

"Are you having one of your little episodes, Todd?" she hisses. "Or are you genuinely an insane, paranoid  _pinche cabrón_?"

He ignores her words, is caught instead by the way her hair moves and he feels it again, oh, he feels that silken hair against his cheeks, brushing his lips, and she's so  _herself_  now, so on fire, that he wants to grab her, make her tell him that he's been imagining everything, that they were explosive on that bed together, that of course he didn't hurt her, and of course she isn't playing him, and that everything he believes about himself is a lie, and even if it isn't, she can fix it, and she will... she'll make it better... all better...

... But her eyes are cold, the shadow of pain in them is deep, and the sight of those eyes is much more convincing than any mollifying bullshit he could force from her lips. But God, what he wouldn't give to hear it.

"You know what?" she says, shutting down, backing away. "It doesn't matter. You clearly won't even try. I wanted, no I  _needed_ , to give you the benefit of the doubt, but—,"

"—If that's true, Delgado, then you're an idiot," he growls to keep her fire alive. He braces for the retort—you don't call Delgado an idiot and get away with it. He watches her jaw clench, nostrils flare, and he can tell that, oh, she wants to, that any second she'll drop the bullshit and he'll be picking himself up off the floor... but she just closes her eyes, pulls a deep breath and his heart sinks as he watches her maneuver into striking position...

"We had a chance here, Todd," she says through phony tears. "A real chance, you know? Half an hour ago we were on that bed, risking everything with each other, and yes, like an idiot I hoped things might be different, that you would let me in, just a little... but here I am again, the bad guy in some warped, twisted fantasy of yours—,"

She breaks off with bruised cry that seems so real... God, she's good. Good enough that he's getting confused again, like he's lost the plot, like he's in the wrong dream, a dream where lights don't mean anything... but if he tries to wake up from it he might find himself in an even worse dream...

_We had a chance... a real chance..._

"Delgado, look—," he says, mostly to make her shut up so he can orient himself, try to figure out what she's after... but it's so damn bright in here that everything merges and he can't recall the world before the lights...

And through the bright he sees a goddamned sliver of hope slinking toward him, like a dog he keeps dumping by the roadside that just won't get the hint. It's telling him to STOP; that  _he's_  the idiot, that he's got this all wrong and he has to just say the words, just lower his guard and ask her what the hell happened on that bed...

But another voice, the one he actually trusts, warns him to shut the fuck up. It's gotta be a trap, like in the Palace Bar. He used her, pounded her like a crack whore he picked up out of the gutter, and that's just the part he can remember...

"Well, what is it, Todd?" she says, lifting a brow.

_Just shut the fuck up..._

No. He can play the middle, stay safe by giving her something she already knows. He's taken far greater risks than that tonight. So has she.

"Look..., " he says. "I know you're not the bad guy. I am. I'm... I'm garbage, you get that now. I'm out of control, like you said. I hurt... people. Even when I don't mean to. See," he says sourly, hands itching to touch her, or to find and hit the button that will rewind the past hour, rewind his entire life. "I finally made even  _you_  afraid of me."

"Todd—," she begins, eyes overflowing with a tenderness and confusion that looks so real he has to cut her off.

"—So THAT...," he winces, jerks his head toward the crime scene of the bed and feels a thawing inside, words moving, stretching like stiff muscles, words that want to come—about old dreams from old lives that take over and destroy everything—but no. You don't talk about the dreams. And even if he could trust her, which he can't, he's just so damned tired of it all. He shakes his head and says simply, "It's not you, okay? Can you just believe that? Because you're—,"

He shuts up, grits his teeth before this gets away from him, before he inadvertently walks right into whatever trap she's laying for him... if he hasn't already.

Téa leans in fractionally. "I'm what, Todd?"

His gaze drifts over her face; her beautiful full lips, her deep, soulful eyes... he's learned to read her moods—by the tilt of her chin, the lift of a brow—and now, beneath her tense expression he sees something so vivid and wrong that it stands out like blood on a snow white carpet:

HOPE.

It's sniffing around her like it keeps sniffing around him. But hers isn't scrawny and abused; hers is well fed and in its prime. And it's telling him loud and clear that there is no trap waiting to snare him, that she hasn't been playing him in the least. That her vulnerability is  _real_ , that the reason she wasn't screaming at him is that she wasn't angry. And she wasn't angry because, despite everything he's done to her—months of cruelty, games, insanity, rejection, and whatever the hell happened on that bed—she still wants him.

He doesn't know whether to puke or punch her.

_I'm what, Todd..._

Her words linger in the air like a stench. He could understand her wanting to play him, get back at him—he resented it, but he could understand it. But  _this_... 

He swallows down nausea and moves toward her stiffly, stops when she shoots him a warning glare... she may be hopeful, but she's not stupid. Still, there's so much under that glare that's soft and pliant and his for the taking. She relaxes a bit and he gets closer, stops again when she sets her jaw. He feels like he's trying to coax a feral cat. When she inhales sharply and tosses her head like she couldn't care less what he does, he moves in, lifts his hand. She stiffens, eyes him sidelong, but lets him touch her face, run the back of his fingers along her cheek. He marvels at the softness, fixes his eyes on her mouth. He loves to watch her mouth, especially when she's pissed at him; or, as he learned not so long ago... turned on. Her lips bloom, get fuller, red as blood... 

She'll give him another chance, and another chance after that if he just tells her what she wants to hear. And right now, if he can manage to get himself out of the way, she'll forget how he treated her and go back to that bed with him for more of the same...

He trails his fingertips over her lips, watches her eyes close, her head tilt back, and he feels her like fire in his veins, recalls the shape of her nipple between his lips, against his tongue... and a warm haze envelopes him, so dense he can't draw breath. He's dizzy, half erect, remembering her  _passion_ , how it freed him—the joy of it,  _the high_. He remembers the way her voice caught in her throat just before... before she came... she did come, he realizes that now—pleasure with the pain. But so what; the body can betray—he knows that better than anyone. And what are orgasms when what you really want doesn't even exist... when what does exist scares you so much deep down that, despite whatever delusional bullshit you tell yourself, you have to turn on all the lights so you can see the monster coming...

But the monster is already here. He can feel it, rising up like black poison inside him, like a malignancy, and he listens as it tells him what it wants to do to her, how it wants to shove her to her knees and gag her with its dick; it wants to double her over, fuck her like a jackhammer from behind, its hands around her throat, squeezing, choking until she almost passes out, but not quite because it wants to hear her scream as it beats her ass and shoots white come on the reddening handprints; it wants to—

Todd clenches his teeth to distract himself from the cascade of images, of responses. He's reeling, disgusted, shuts it down and forces air out through rounded lips to ease the pressure, to release it into the bright room where it can't do any harm. But it always finds a way back in...

He takes her chin in his hand, leans close, her question still lingering between them...

_I'm what, Todd?_

He lowers his mouth, lets it play over hers, tastes her breath; so sweet, coming fast and shallow. She's bottomless compassion, endless mercy... and for the first time, he doesn't want to punish her for it. He traces the swell of her lower lip with his tongue and just when she shivers and yields, opens that hot mouth, he whispers...

"You're a fucking masochist, Delgado."

He pinches her chin and shoves her away.

He didn't want to punish her—he  _had_  to.

She stumbles, breath rushing from her lungs, smoky eyes slowly coming to focus on him. "More games, Todd," she gasps like he snuck up behind her and opened a vein. "Really... now?"

He whoops a high-pitched laugh. "You don't get it, Delgado. I  _have_  to fuck with you," he laughs again, keeps laughing, can't seem to stop, practically doubles over with it to mask the rising anguish—because she would make it so easy to be the monster, to do all those things he imagined, and so much more. "You just keep begging for it, so what choice do I have? Ever ask yourself what's wrong with you... why the hell you do that?"

Her mouth drops open, eyes blazing, body swaying like the floor has shifted under her feet. "What's wrong with  _me?!_  I—," But she breaks off, eyes losing focus. He watches a storm of emotions range over her face, her intricate mind working hard to fathom this twisted thing she's married to. 

"Begging for it," she whispers, and he smiles inwardly. Bingo. "This... all this cruelty... the misery you... inflict on people... this isn't just a game to you... you get off on it, don't you?"

He relaxes. No need to argue or defend himself... this is what needs to happen. "Just crawl out from under a rock, Delgado?  _Of course_  I get off on it."

"No, really," she says forcefully, like he doesn't know what he's saying. She moves closer, into his shadow, seems to scan his face for clues she missed, an ugliness more subtle than his ragged scar. "What are you trying to do, Todd?  _You were begging for it_... those are the words of a rapist... and I know you're no rapist."

He smiles from a black place, a place that remembers power, body buzzing, blood surging. " _How_  do you know? You with me 24/7? You know how I think, what goes on in my head? What gets me hard, what gets me off?"

She winces, looks away quickly. "I know you've changed."

"All that's changed," he says, moving in as close as she'll let him, to loom, to intimidate. "Is that I put myself on a leash. But I can get loose whenever I want... and I do. All those nights I say I'm at the office... you sure about that? There's always somebody out there like you, Delgado... some bitch just  _begging for it_..."

She snaps shocked eyes on him, stares... finally the color drains from her face until even those lips of hers are pale and ghostly. She backs away, looks like she might throw up.

"And... the penny drops," Todd crows. "The Eagle has landed! Congratulations, Delgado, only took you nine months. For a smart lawyer, you're pretty fucking stupid."

"Oh, my God," she says, thin as paper, shaky fingers coming up to press her brow. "No. No, you're  _lying_. Starr... I got Starr for you. Tell me you're lying, Todd," she says with mounting urgency. "Tell me you have an ulterior motive here... this is a game. You don't still think that way. You don't...  _do_  those things..."

He cocks his head back, looks down his nose at her. Her chin is trembling but she's recovering, defiant now, looking right back at him like she's searching... for what, a hint of humanity? Good luck. All he gives her is dark contempt. But her eyes are burning into his, compelling him to tell the truth... so he does.

"Those...  _things_. You mean, what, the assaults, the rapes, kidnappings, murders—those  _things_?" he says smoothly. He decides to hold off describing the brutal fantasies he just had about her for another time. "You know who I am, Delgado. You know what I am... you saw it in the Palace Bar after your little charade. But instead of throwing me out of here on my ass, you let me stay. Not only let me stay—you couldn't wait to get me into the sack, even after what I did to you on the sofa." He leans in close. "Well, it worked, Delgado, you finally got your taste, and you fucking loved it. So tell me... what does that make you?"

She's been absorbing his words with a mask of hate, but at that last question she flinches like he landed a blow; it lasts less than a heartbeat, but he sees it—the nerve he struck, raw and exposed, vibrating there in the blinding light. He swallows the words he was about to say, but adds them to his arsenal... you never know what might come in handy.

"Don't try and bullshit me," he says instead, voice soft, bathed in malice. "You get off on it every bit as much as I do." He gives her the coldest, sexiest smile he can muster and reaches out to touch the ends of her hair. "How many times  _did_  I get you off, huh?" he drawls, eyes moving slowly down her body. "Want some more...? I think you want some more... do you want some more, Delgado?"

With each word she's seemed to grow more unnerved, more disgusted, until finally she's backing away, looking at him like he's this hideous thing that crawled out of the sewer. It's an ugly expression. It's a beautiful expression... and he closes his eyes, sighs deeply as a wave of euphoria lifts him gently, rocks him in its arms; it whispers that this is how it would feel to be finished... to have killed the lot of them—her compassion, her mercy, her HOPE—to have made her see him, finally  _see him_  as he is, monstrous under hot, bright lights...

And what if that happened, just now... what if he made her see?

Well, then they could start again. He knows he could calm her down with a few contrite, well-chosen words, and then their marriage would be what it should have been all along—a business arrangement. No expectations, no illusions, no disappointments. No pain. And tomorrow could be Day One of his brand new celibacy count. He sees himself lounging behind his desk at The Sun, feet up, concocting fake sporting events, Delgado safe and sound at home with Shorty...

He's floating on the fantasy... but he's drawn down by a bark of rough, bitter laughter. He knows the sound—it usually follows an injury, and precedes a very long lawyerly tirade. He opens his eyes, is ecstatic to find Téa squaring her shoulders, jutting out her chin, still red from the pressure of his thumb. Now her rage will come. He gets ready to be demolished, is humming with anticipation. And from the way she's standing there, fists clenched at her sides, she won't be using words. He opens himself to the blow, hopes it's a good hard one, a real tooth-rattler. He all but points to his face...  _right here, Delgado, give it to me here..._

She lifts her arm. He stiffens instinctively, but she's moving too slowly, not gaining any momentum. And when he realizes she's about to lay a gentle palm on his bruised cheek, he rears back, snarling like a cornered animal. She drops her hand, eyes brimming.

"Are you ever not playing me, Todd?" she says softly, and laughs the saddest laugh he's ever heard.

He gapes at her, too stunned to speak. No way did she see through that impenetrable, sadistic armor of his. It's taken him years of agony to forge that thing—it's the best protection he's got. But if she did see through it... if it's useless against her...

Then there's nowhere left to hide.

"That's what we do though, right?" she's continuing into his dazed silence. "Play games, manipulate each other; I want you, you don't want me, I try to leave, you won't let me, we finally... get together... and now you're punishing and pushing me away in the cruelest, most malicious—," she breaks off, pinches her nose, but the tears are already flowing. "But you have no intention of really letting me go, do you? No, you can't. You need someone around to torture, and you've fixated on me. And you want to know what's  _wrong_  with me... why I keep  _begging for it_...?"

Her eyes blast into his for a long moment, then she makes a small, hurt sound, grabs his head with both hands and pulls him down for a hard, open-mouthed kiss. Before he can react, she releases him with a shove. He stumbles back, lips buzzing. She looks him straight in the eye. "You know why, you bastard," she hisses. "You count on it."

He blinks, dumbfounded, tongue darting out on its own to taste her. He can't quite form a thought... her words echo in his brain, gaining in volume...

 _You know why... YOU KNOW WHY.._.

No. No, he can't, won't let that in. She's not  _that_  warped. When she said it in the Palace Bar he almost fell for it... the warmth in her eyes, the promise...

_Maybe you do love me... and maybe I feel the same way about you..._

But it was a tactic, a trap, that's all—just like it is now. It  _has_  to be. He shakes his head, tastes bitterness on his tongue instead of her.  _Goddammit_ , this bitch is good...

But there's that mangy dog of hope on the horizon again, half-starved and pathetic, slinking toward him, begging him to trust... reminding him that he said it first, that day in his office, his heart aching from missing her...

_Yeah, I said it. But I didn't mean it, he tells the dog as it creeps closer. I had to get her to stay, and people say things... people do things, awful things, all the time, to get what they want, or when they're emotional irrational insane..._

And then he's overwhelmed by fear because it's worse now. She saw through his armor like it was made of glass, and without it—without the illusion, the  _threat_  of violence—the only protection he has against her is  _real_  violence, black poison, the monster he tried so hard to destroy but only managed to put on a thin leash—he didn't lie to her about that—and it will get free again if he's cornered and hurting...

And he's pulled away then, hard and fast, dumped at the penthouse... and he's looking down into Starr's tiny face, peacefully asleep in her crib as bullets from Mahoney's gun ricochet around her nursery. Todd reaches, panicked, mouth like cotton, and gathers her close to his pounding heart, desperate to keep her safe...

He's aware of sounds floating... but they don't make landfall until his eyes find Téa, standing inches from him in her room at the Palace Hotel. The warm palm of her left hand is flat on his chest... and his hand is covering hers, his fingers reflexively feeling for her wedding band...

"—another game, Todd?" she's saying.

Time has obviously passed and he doesn't know how they got into this position, or what they're talking about, so he swallows, abruptly lets go of her hand and backs away so she won't feel him trembling.

"If you are serious, if you really want to keep me safe, then you have to help me," she continues as though he's been fully present for the conversation, as though she doesn't notice his confusion. She's calm now, larger and in command, addressing him like he's an errant employee. "This is where you get to be the good guy for once, Todd. You're going to let me off this sick ride. You're going to stop this, now. You have to stop, you have to be the one, because I can't—," she breaks off and quickly turns her back to him. "You have to. You have no idea how much you're hurting me—," she whispers, barely mastering her emotions... bravado intact.

He's staring, dazed, still floating between worlds. It's easy to ignore her when she's crying—he's used to ignoring women's tears. It's the struggle for dignity that gets him every time. He must have made her a sort of promise when he was away; his body did, or a kinder part of him that was momentarily free to declare itself. Starr's innocent face is still fresh in his mind...

_You have no idea how much you're hurting me..._

Yes, here's another person he's injuring, another woman begging him to stop. Yes, it has to stop. She has to be safe. There should be no argument. And yet...

A life with no Delgado. He gives himself a moment to try it on, to imagine the letting go, the absence... to really feel it. It starts as a creeping, hollow loneliness in his chest; progresses quickly to hopelessness... a growing void... and suddenly the floor seems to drop away and he's plummeting alone through barren, ice-cold space, gripped by panic so acute that he's suffocating. He recognizes this place from when he was very small and he tries to stop it, but he's so lost, spinning with vertigo... bile burns his throat and he needs to grab onto something, but the only thing nearby is her and she doesn't want him anymore. Still, he tries, reaches... her back is turned, she's only feet away, but too far. He couldn't possibly get to her before he falls into the black and disappears forever...

"Do you want that?" a voice is saying. Todd finds that he's sitting on the sofa, staring at the half-empty bottle of water on the table, weak with relief and gratitude that Téa is standing over him, not touching, but protecting him somehow, shielding him like she always does... from the void, from himself.

But no one is protecting her.

He's too chilled and shaken from his fall to speak, but his mind is clear. Epiphanies will do that. He reaches out a hand, sticks his forefinger into the puddle at the base of the water bottle. It's warm now. It grounds him. He pulls his finger back, drags a streak of water across the table, makes an arrow pointing at himself.

The monster has to die.

It's the only way any of them will be safe. 

Regardless of what he did to her during their marriage, regardless of what happened on that bed, Téa has to stay. She has to kill the monster. She's the only one who can.

But she won't stay—unless he gives her something she asked for. 

_I hoped things might be different, that you would let me in, just a little..._

The idea horrifies him. That voice inside screams at him again to SHUT THE FUCK UP, because it knows where he's headed. It suggests a compromise... maybe he doesn't have to go the whole nine yards, maybe he can just admit he's human...

"You want me to stop hurting you. Okay. I'll stop hurting you," he says hesitantly, testing the waters. "If you'll stop hurting me."

He hears an exhausted sigh, then her voice falls on him like ashes from an untended cigarette. "No, Todd. No more conditions. No more games."

He falters. She was supposed to ask how she hurt him, and he was ready to tell her:  _You made me need you. You made me think I could be better. And then you abandoned me. You betrayed me. You humiliated me. You used me..._

But she didn't ask.

And now he has to take her hand.

_Don't do it, you weak little shit..._

She stiffens when he touches her, but lets him raise her hand and press it to his face. He looks up at her, the bright lights in the room scorching his eyes.

He exhales to rid himself of the warning voice and any other tiny malignancies that might ruin this. He finds her eyes. Panic is close, but this is what she wants, and she has to stay. She's seen through his armor, so she's partly there already, but he'll make it easy for her. He takes a deep, agonized breath and throws himself as open as he can, with his eyes, his touch, his emotions... he lays himself bare, holds nothing back... an entire lifetime's worth of wreckage and misery are there on display for her to pick through, examine, judge... and she needs to see that she's the one. She can heal it all. She has to stay.

It lasts only moments, but it's too much. He drops her hand like it's scalding him and breaks the connection, shoves it all back down and slams himself shut again, shaking like a target, like prey; a bunny rabbit among wolves.

But it's worth it when he feels her hand in his hair. He closes his eyes, feels tears fall...

A sudden harsh knock on the door makes them both jump.

"Téa," Andrew calls. "Are you all right in there?"

Todd hisses.

Téa's hand falls away...

 


	6. Chapter 6

"Téa, are you all right in there?"

Andrew's voice blasts through Téa's mind like a fire alarm, leaving her shattered... even more shattered than she was by Todd's rejection and mind games. She had honestly forgotten that other people existed... it's been just the two of them, Todd and Téa, alone together in this room—bantering, fighting, fucking, retreating—locked in one form of emotional combat or another stretching as far back as she can remember, and now...

She's threadbare, insubstantial as a ghost, untethered from herself. Thoughts alight... she reaches for them, can't quite grasp them...

What she  _can_  grasp is that something huge just happened. It was just a moment, it's starting to fade like a dream upon waking, but in that moment, Todd  _let her in_... or rather  _pulled her in,_ like light into a black hole. It was shocking and beautiful at first, but then she seemed to be weirdly drawn down by an intensity, a force that penetrated her until she felt him... and they seemed to merge and become  _one_ , as surely as she's Téa Delgado. But if she'd been asked her name in that moment, she wouldn't have known it... because the  _one_  they'd become was  _Todd..._ with no trace of Téa at all...

 _Oyé, Téita_ ,  _you got what you wanted,_  Del laughs lightly in her mind, the beloved, round face sad and scolding.

_No, mijo, I got what I asked for. Not what I wanted..._

She'd asked Todd to let her in... just a little... a chance to see what made him tick, maybe get answers to a few of her precious questions... but instead, he dumped his soul at her feet. And what she saw, what she  _felt_ , wasn't the inner workings of some brooding Gothic anti-hero—it was a shocking brokenness. A ravaged, traumatized child...

She swallows, barely feels the movement in her throat, or the thin hotel carpeting beneath her bare feet. She's still there, still caught in the undertow of his misery, his profound  _need_... thick, sticky, like black tar. He seems to be calling her from inside it, from a lost place far away, willing her to stay and find him, willing her with a pressure she feels like hands inside and out, shaping her like she's this malleable thing, an inert pile of clay...

"Téa. Téa, look at me..."

A soul-deep shudder wracks her. She pulls small sips of air because her heart is exploding in her chest and there's no room for more, and she swaddles herself inside the oversized hotel bathrobe like it's a shield. It had never occurred to her that a defenseless Todd would be such a threat... that his suffering—not his bitterness—would be the thing to finally extinguish her.

But his hold is ebbing, freeing her little by little. She tries to focus on her own separateness, her realness, with things that are hers alone: Spanish pet names and flashes of memory, dancing, dancing in a white room,  _en pointe_  for the first time; Abuelita's soft, nimble hands dropping tostones into the spitting frying pan; the hard lump of her mother's perfume bottle beneath her pillow at night. She goes searching for recollections of wholeness and strength, lets them fill her, expand her sense of self, harden her bones... and then she flashes on her mother cowering beneath her father's raised fists...

She flinches, comes back hard to reality. Fists, violence... why...?

Todd is standing next to her, snarling at the door, radiating hate. His knuckles are white on his fisted hands, ready to strike. She feels her body jerk away involuntarily; she'd existed so thoroughly inside him just now that his physical presence is a shock. He turns to her, eyes wet, ancient pain seeming to hang from him like shredded flesh—it's only the aftereffect of what she'd seen inside him, like an image burned into her retinas—but her heart explodes in her chest all over again. She can still feel his hair between her fingers as she'd stroked it and silently whispered,  _hush, hush, I'm here... it will be all right..._

But it won't be all right. She can't be the one to make it all right. Not if she wants to stay intact.

"Come on, Téa...," Todd whispers, like contrails of pain.

She shudders at the sound, is grateful for all the lights in the room... they offer a kind of protection. Despite the frailty inside him, he seems huge beside her, casting a shadow that dwarfs her. She can't bring herself to look at him, or to stifle her revulsion, her  _shame_. But his will is pressing on her, demanding...

_Acknowledge me... give me something... don't turn away now, don't you dare turn away from me now..._

She must be coming back to herself, because she's struck by the irony; she'd made that same silent plea a short time ago—after they'd been intimate with their bodies, if nothing else. She'd needed the same things he needs now... but all he gave her were bullshit games, paranoia, cruelty... she'd expected it, but that didn't make it any less devastating...

But then something shifted, made him open up. Maybe because of the half-assed way she'd admitted her feelings for him...

_You know why, you bastard..._

Maybe he really got that he'd lost her and this is his Hail Mary pass. Maybe he wants it after all—communication, intimacy, a real marriage—all the things she claimed to want and tried to cajole and shame him into giving her. Or maybe he just picked this moment to finally trust her enough to take a chance, believing that she's strong enough to heal his brokenness, strong enough to save them both...

But she's not. 

And she hates herself for it, almost collapses under the weight of grief and her own inadequacy. He gave her what she asked for, and now she can't handle it... and it's about to get worse.

Because Andrew is waiting. And she has every intention of going to him.

Her survival depends on it.

###

"Téa! Do you hear me?" The knocking is louder now, more insistent, and it makes Todd crazy. He swings his eyes to Téa, swaying on her feet and gazing at the door like she's lost in a dream.

"Talk about Divine Intervention," she murmurs, and huffs an empty laugh.

Todd feels it like a stab in his heart; he's a gaping, self-inflicted wound, and she's laughing. He stumbles between her and the door, tries to get her eyes on him, but they slide away.

"Ignore that idiot, Delgado," he says as gently as he can with panic choking him. He reaches out a hand to her; she stares at it vacantly, then jerks away like he might try to dig claws into her and pulls the lapels of her robe together. Her hand had been in his hair only moments ago, and he'd  _felt_  her, spreading inside him like a warm, healing balm. Now all he feels is rising panic. He's got to get her back to that place...

"Téa, please, look at me."

"Todd..." she says mildly, eyes wide and fixed on the floor. "Where was all this before—this intimacy, this  _sharing_? Where was it after we had sex and I was begging for a morsel of kindness from you, for an ounce of connection? Where was it when it might have made a difference?"

He stiffens, mind clouding with confusion and the memory of lights and monsters. But she's going fast and he needs to give her something... 

"I didn't think that...," he begins, mouth dry. "I—couldn't then. But it's here now, okay? Please..."

"Convenient how you  _could_ , when I made it clear I was finished." She looks toward, but not at him. "What's the matter Todd, run out of other ways to manipulate me?"

He feels gut punched. "The fuck are you saying?"

"I'm saying that what you just did—opening up, reaching out—that was your choice. I didn't ask for that. And now to expect—"

"—You've done nothing  _but_  ask for that—," he snarls.

She winces, shakes her head. "I'm not a toy, Todd. I'm not a puppet that you can just... you can't just..." she breaks off with a whimper, jaw and throat working as she seems to battle with herself. "I can't. I'm done. I'm sorry you're hurting, but it's too late, Todd."

He rockets from devastation to rage in a split second. "Because Andrew shows up? What is he, your holy crutch?"

"I will not dignify that with a response," she says flatly and turns away. "You have to leave now. Please leave. I need to—"

"—No, you answer me, Delgado!"

She wheels on him, eyes wild and blasting hostility. "You will not make me responsible for your welfare, Todd!" she screams. "I am not your goddamned MOTHER!"

Todd shivers in the shock of a bitter wind. It's hard to stay upright... his legs are weak and he's teetering on the edge of that barren darkness. He reaches for something, anything, but finds nothing. From a great distance, he hears a doorknob rattle and someone shout. He bends, rests his hands on his thighs, can't quite get a breath.

Bottomless compassion... endless mercy... his mother's face, smiling in the sun... her handwriting in loopy green ink on a note his father crushes and throws into the fire... floorboards squeaking squeaking and snow melting under his cheek, and...

_I am not your goddamned MOTHER!_

He comes back, fights to stay, fights not to lose it, manages a glance at Téa; she's pale, huddled and trembling in that big white robe, arms tight around her body like she's trying to hold herself together. She looks as gutted as he feels.

But she's got her eyes on the door and she's gone. All gone.

"I'm fine, Andrew," she calls. "I'll meet you downstairs."

###

Téa watches Todd struggle to pull himself together. He's doubled over, face hidden from view by his veil of hair. She knows that his mother abandoned him, that his father abused him... and she can see that her outburst cut him to the core. It was a shitty thing to say and it takes every ounce of strength she has to stand still and not collapse at his feet, not gather him into her arms and beg for forgiveness. The ravaged child didn't deserve that; he didn't deserve the life he was given... but Téa deserves to survive... and she meant every word.

And she feels... powerful. It's a rare thing to pierce Todd's armor; then again, he's doesn't seem to be wearing any. That's a rare skill, too, getting him to relinquish his defenses, to leave himself open. Twice in one day she's done that—first in the bar and now in this quagmire of post-sex misery. But she needs weapons if she's to survive, and she needs to know how to wield them. But she doesn't need to enjoy his pain as much as she is...

"Please, Todd," she gasps, repelled by herself. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Too late," he says, so raw, so wounded. Once, he would have died before admitting that she scored a hit. But now he's doing so, openly, repeatedly...

"What did you say before, Todd... I'll stop hurting you, if you'll stop hurting me...?"

He takes a breath, straightens up and smooths his hair back with both hands. He looks drained, translucent... the ravaged child visible just underneath...

"What about it," he sighs.

"There's only one way we can stop... you see that, right?" she says gently.

His hands are still in his hair, holding it back, eyes widening as he seems to consider. A precious moment, a heartbeat of hope in which he might say...  _Yeah, go, just go, let's end this freak show now_... but he shakes his head and mouths the word  _no_  without a sound.

Their eyes meet for the first time since Andrew's return; it's a look too heavy with mutual sorrow and regret to last. Téa breaks it first, before the tears can come, and she turns away, moves toward the dresser on the far wall, tries not to look at her reflection in the mirror above it. There's no point in continuing this torture. They're too toxic for one another... he'll destroy her, but she'll happily inflict a hell of a lot of damage on her way to oblivion; she knows that now. And he's already suffered so much. 

Too much.

She needs to get out of this robe, out of this room and out of this marriage.

Andrew is waiting.

###

Todd watches Téa slowly cross the room. There's a sadness, a resignation about her, but he can't quite read her the way he could before; she's strangely... detached from him, and it makes him feel desperately alone.

"That was fucked up, what you said, Delgado," he says, trying to engage her.

She stops in front of the low dresser. "I can't be what you need, Todd," she says dully, vacantly, with no affect whatsoever. "And you can't be what I need. You've got to let this go, for both our sakes."

She's giving him nothing to grab onto; it's like to trying to touch a ghost. "I'll tell you what we need," he grumbles. "We need to get the hell out of this room, that's what we need." He's grown to hate this room. Too much has happened here—too much angst and confusion and warfare, both open and covert... and sex happened here. That always screws everything up. Besides, it's still too goddamned bright in here.

And he has to get her away from Andrew. That's who really fucked things up. She was so close, her hand was in his hair, moving, spreading warmth... and he knows she  _felt_  him. She did...

He kicks at the floor, jams his hands into his pockets. "What do you say we go home, Delgado. No tricks, no commitments. Just to talk, try and work things out, someplace where there aren't any  _distractions_ ," he says, glowering at the door.

She slides the top drawer open with both hands. "I'm not going home with you, Todd."

He nods stiffly, swallows, looks around the sparse room. It's easier to pretend to both of them that he doesn't understand. "Okay, right. You have a lot of stuff to pack. I'll send a car."

She opens her mouth, draws a sharp breath, but says simply, "There's nothing to talk about." She reaches into the drawer and lifts out silky red things...

Todd freezes at the sight. He sees Téa stiffen too, her eyes darting toward him and away. He's sure she's been caught by the same memory he has—red silk... the night he threw her out into that blizzard. He sees her again, peeling off her robe, the red silk sliding down her body to the floor, face soft, hopeful, brave... and she offered herself to him. The wild want flares in his veins again; God, the battle inside him as she'd stood there... and he'd seen himself respond to her in his mind's eye, hands on her breasts and ass, his body pressing her against the wall, hoisting her up, her thighs wrapping around him, hands reaching down for him... and he'd grown hard with the vision. But red silk shimmers like blood. It had pooled at her feet, spread on the white carpet... and then all he could see were bodies bleeding, bodies writhing, body parts in Starr's tiny hands because he gets attached emotional irrational insane... and Marty was kneeling by the door, wrecked, but still strong enough to flay him alive... and it all moved too fast, got away from him as Téa stood naked, offering herself... 

And things are moving too fast now, getting away from him again...

Because those silky red things are not for him this time.

Rage roils like a fireball in Todd's gut... and hate, real violence spreading like poison... 

Téa is moving toward the closet, giving no outward sign that she's at all thrown by the memory of that night. Maybe she's not. Maybe, despite all her squawking about how  _mean_  he'd been, it was just the chance she'd been waiting for. She'd gone running to Andrew, after all. She'd moved out, left him alone, abandoned him. No way. No fucking way is she leaving him again for that wife-stealing piece of shit outside the door. His jaw clenches like iron, but he muscles the rage back down, makes his voice as steady as he can because Téa never responds well to his insanity...

"Delgado,  _don't_."

She opens the closet door.

"Okay, look, if this is about... about the sex...," he stammers, mind crushed by internal G-forces, images of red silk and golden skin pawed by boney clerical fingers. "Maybe... maybe I did it all wrong, but we—I gave you what you wanted, Delgado!"

She spins. "I took what I wanted, Todd!" She drops her head fast, bites her lip, takes a moment before looking up at him, clear-eyed and direct. "And you punished me for it. But that's not—"

"—Téa!" Andrew calls again. "I'm not leaving without you!"

Todd seethes, but feels a little thrill of victory; at least he got a reaction from her.

"That's not what this is about, Todd. This is about—"

Another sharp knock. "Téa! Let me in!"

They turn as one and scowl at the door. "Andrew!" Téa shouts with an angry edge. "Please! Wait for me downstairs!" She turns back to Todd, expression weirdly haunted as her eyes slide over him and away. "This is about survival.  _My_  survival."

His own eyes close at that, pain spreading through him because he understands all about survival. He understands... that's why she has to stay.

"I'm sorry. I'm going through with the divorce," she says.

His head snaps up, eyes flying open. "The hell you are!"

She doesn't flinch, stands there with her chin up, shoulders back, impassive. Blank.

He sees his future, feels the hopelessness, the terrifying pull of the void... and panic overwhelms him, laying waste to his stubborn, useless pride...

"Look, okay, I'm sorry. I fucked up! I fuck up everything, but you know that!" He spins away, turns back and throws up pleading hands, his voice rising to an ugly pitch that makes him wince. "You gotta help me, Delgado! You wanted me to help you, well, you gotta help me. You gotta give me time! That was the first step, right? A huge fucking first step!" He feels his organs shifting, a desperation, a mounting grief. "Jesus, Téa, I gave you everything! I did what you wanted, I bared my fucking soul to you... don't do this to me!"

Her features soften, her posture eases and he waits, breath held, for minutes, hours, while she deliberates, his nails digging into his palms to distract him from this... impotence. Finally, she raises a hand to him. He sags with relief like a naughty little boy who's been forgiven... like a broken man being offered one last undeserved chance to heal...

But as he reaches for her, she pulls away.

"I can't. I can't," she moans, eyes wet. She looks at him, then quickly away like she sees something grotesque. "You don't understand. You need too much, Todd... I'm so sorry." Her voice is thick, trembling, and he has no doubt she's sincere. But he's way past sick of this shit, and he feels it, the red hot hate and rage that have been on a low boil since that sermon-spouting hypocrite pounded on the door and wrecked everything. He lets it ignite now and incinerate both his hurt and the unnatural shame of begging. He unfurls his body to its full height, stalks toward her, doesn't stop until he's glaring down at her, his face inches from hers.

"You bitch," he growls. "I knew you would do this to me. I knew you'd betray me. I knew you'd set me up, promise me everything, get me to fuck you, get me to open myself up, then jerk the rug out from under me. Are you laughing at me now, Delgado? Is this your idea of fun?"

She looks up at him with those big wet, searching eyes, waves of pain washing over her face. "No, it isn't. None of this is fun for me."

And he hears her voice as clearly in his mind as if she were speaking...

_You know why..._

They stare at each other, so close, those silent words echoing between them, gaining momentum inside him until he almost starts to believe that it wasn't a trap or a tactic, maybe even to see it... a bruised tenderness in her eyes that could be—yet couldn't possibly be, should never, ever be—genuine love for him. 

 _Then how can you leave me_... he wants to say...

But he feels the ghost of her palm pressing into his chest, the hardness of her wedding ring beneath his fingers... he'd said as if in a dream that he would  _keep her safe_ , he remembers it now... he'd been terrified, clutching Starr to his pounding heart, but it wasn't Starr... it was  _Téa_... 

He understands, but his rage wants to stay, is fighting to stay, feels justified and he tries to stoke it... there's so much fuel—all the mockery, manipulations, betrayals, hoop after fucking hoop he's jumped through for her...

_You know why..._

_You know why, you bastard... you count on it. You're hurting me so much..._

He'd almost forgotten that part.

_You're hurting me so much... you punished me for it... this is about my survival..._

He needs her to kill the monster and save the man... but maybe it's too late... maybe there's nothing left but monster. Sounds begin pouring into his head, so many it hurts, too many to fit... Téa's sounds and the sounds females make when they're in shock or pain or in fear for their lives, the sound of bullets ricocheting in a child's nursery... and Marty, Marty most of all, blood-soaked and screaming. He backs away, raises his hands uselessly to his ears to block it all out, grief driving tears to his eyes because she was supposed to help him, make him better, but it's too late. He drove her away. She's seen him, the truth of him, all that he is... and she doesn't want him.

She doesn't want him...

There's nothing left to do now but fall...

"TÉA!" Andrew yells, the doorknob twisting, rattling. "I know Todd is in there with you! Answer me!"

THAT VOICE. THAT WEASELY WHINEY FUCKING VOICE...

Todd hears the pitiable roar of a cornered, mortally wounded animal. He knows it's coming from him by the way his body implodes with fury, by the way he lunges, hands curling like claws. In a split second he's at the door, riding hot euphoria, anticipating the kill... but something small and desperate is in his way, grabbing at his arm. He tries to get around it, push through it, can barely hear it over the blood lust pounding in his ears.

"No, Todd," Téa is crying. "It's not his fault!"

He rips away from her, but as she grabs for him again the sight of her reaches him through red haze... crouching, terrified.  _Terrified_. He stops himself for her sake, reins in the energy as much as he can, but he's still seething, panting, nostrils flaring. He bellows over her head, "Yeah, her HUSBAND is here, mother fucker who isn't her husband, so FUCK OFF!"

"TÉA!" Andrew yells, voice an octave higher now. "Are you in danger?"

"He _asks_?" Todd spits, barely leashed, shaking with self-restraint.

"And what, you would kick the door down?"

"If I thought you were in trouble? Goddamn right, that little piece of shit!"

"Shut up," she hisses. She addresses the door, but keeps her eyes on Todd as he snorts and stamps like a caged beast. "Of course not, Andrew," she calls, far too pleasantly. "I need you to wait for me downstairs. I'll just be a few minutes, okay?"

Her eyes are fierce on Todd, warning, like she expects that that alone will keep him in check. He shakes out his arms, rolls his head, expels huffs of air, rocks his weight from side to side in an effort to discharge the unspent violence so he can think clearly. The voices, the sounds of distraught females have faded, but he's a live wire. Too much dredged up and forced to the surface with no outlet, no resolution. He needs to pound Andrew's face. That's all there is to it.

"You okay?" Téa says, eyeing him doubtfully.

He grinds his teeth. "Whatever."

She edges back toward the dresser, keeping him in sight.

"You sure?"

He doesn't answer. He's vaguely disgusted with her... she acts like he's some neutered dog, happy to hold its own leash in return for a pat on the head... which in a way, he is...

"Right. Great. Nice outburst, Todd. I can't believe I was actually feeling  _sorry_  for you," she says, sounding like herself again—pissed, clear-headed, resolute. "I am so out of here. I'll have Nora send the papers to your office in the morning." She takes the red silky things from the top of the dresser and moves to the closet. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to shower and get ready."

Todd stiffens. 

_Shower and get ready..._

_Get rid of all evidence that you fucked me and get yourself ready to fuck him..._

The words flatten him; he's being eradicated without a backward glance, and with that one breath from Téa's lips, his self-control vanishes. All the energy, all the fury that he'd released into the room returns to him like filings to a magnet. He moves up behind her, stealthy as a cat, the fire in his gut burning hotter with each step and before she can turn, he's on her hard, arms shooting around her body, pinning her elbows to her sides. She yelps, and the sound goes right to his groin. He presses his chest to her back, pelvis to her ass, mouth to her ear...

"No way,  _no fucking way_  are you going from me to THAT," he hisses with a voice he doesn't even recognize. He buries his face in the crook of her neck, both to feel her hair on his face, and to stifle a sob. He doesn't want to do this, but he can't  _not_  do this. That she could want that little shit after he gave her everything, after he opened himself... 

He doubles over with the anguish of rejection and his weight bends her over, too, forcing out a little cry that slams his eyes shut, squeezes out a tear because how could she betray him now, no matter what he's done...? 

He grapples to keep her arms pinned and to find the knot in the sash of her robe at the same time, but she's fighting him wildly, screaming curses and twisting, kicking, fists struggling to break free and swing, and the most he can manage is to slip his hand inside the robe and lay his palm flat on the smooth, warm skin of her stomach, splay his fingers wide until he's grazing soft curls. There's a distant sound, a pounding, a voice yelling, but he ignores it and yanks her back against his groin, almost tipping her off her feet. She pitches forward with a cry, reaches out reflexively with her trapped, bent arm and manages to land a fist full of red silk against the wall.

He could push up her robe, the monster wants that, it wants off it's leash so desperately, wants to ram into her from behind... he  _could_ , he's ready... but he settles instead for chinning her hair away from her neck and biting down hard, biting until she cries out, sucking until she makes a sound that's not pain, a sound that makes him buck his erection against her, his own pain fading because he's holding her... and while he's holding her he can pretend that she wants him like she did before, deep inside her, driving hard, before everything went bad. He wants to tell her that she's his now... but he can't do that, can't form the words, so he moves his mouth to another spot, another bite, another mark, and another... sucking, tonguing her delicate throat until she's not fighting anymore and he's wide awake with his own power, so strong, so fully  _himself_  now as she whimpers, pushes back against him and opens her hand to brace against the wall for leverage, red silk falling to the floor like spilled blood...

Across the room, the doorknob rattles. 

"TÉA! ANSWER ME!"

Fresh hatred burns inside Todd like battery acid, but the timing couldn't be better; the hatred clears his head, decides his course. She wants that piece of shit? Fine. Let's see if the feeling's mutual. He straightens up and shoves Téa away, enjoys watching her stumble, recover and wheel on him in a defensive crouch. Her face is red and shining with perspiration, pupils blown wide.

"You bastard," she spits. She lunges for him, swings, but he steps aside cleanly and feels a bubble of pride in her. Here's his Delgado... this woman isn't afraid of monsters. He maneuvers around her, avoids another swing as he picks up the red silk lingerie and crushes it in his hand.

"Open the door," he says, mean and hard as a rock inside and out now, ready to fight or fuck, not really caring which. "Let the preacher see his  _girlfriend_."

Téa glares murder at him, looks down at her half-open robe, yanks it closed. Her lips are red and blooming—bitten, aroused—just the way he likes them. "I don't take orders from... from  _gorillas_ ," she snarls.

"Fine." Todd shrugs, certain that gorilla wasn't the first word to enter her mind. He strides past her toward the door but she grabs his arm, long fingernails digging in, and levels wet, warning eyes at him. "Don't. You. Dare."

"TÉ-AA!" comes a cry from the hall. It's like feedback from a microphone and makes Todd wince.

"Does he do that in bed, Delgado?"

She ignores that. Her eyes are burning, outraged, pleading. "You have no right, Todd."

"I have every right. I'm still your husband... in  _every way_ ," he says darkly, dick at half-mast, buzzing with the memory of her writhing body. A calm has settled over him, a sense of righteousness. He will not be dismissed, he will not be erased by his wife and that hypocritical piece of shit outside. When he goes—if he goes—it will be his decision. Not theirs.

"Now open that door," he says. "Or I will."

Téa releases Todd's arm and glowers at him for a long moment. He watches her mind work... the weighing, calculating... and she finally seems to accept his resolve. She exhales, throws her shoulders back, sets her jaw, and moves to the door, regal as a queen. Todd licks his lips and gets set to pounce if she tries to run, but she lays her palms flat against the wood, followed by her cheek, and closes her eyes.

"Please, Andrew," she says softly, in a voice that couldn't possibly be heard through the door. Then louder, "Please, Andrew, do as I ask and wait for me downstairs. Todd and I are discussing the divorce."

"Bullshit!" Todd shouts, surges forward, but she raises a hand.

"Just wait," she hisses at him. "Let me... handle this."

"Please, Téa, just open the door," Andrew says, muffled, close on the other side, probably watching through the keyhole.

Téa pulls a deep breath, unlocks the deadbolt and slowly cracks the door. She starts to speak through the gap, but Andrew shoves it open the rest of the way, forcing her back. Todd snarls at the move, won't tolerate another one like it, glares as Andrew's eyes clap on Téa in her snow-white bathrobe. She's radiating a tension that presses on Todd like an erotic forcefield, keeping him partially erect. Andrew scans Téa then jerks his head up to look past her and into the room.

There's little evidence that anything has happened... unless you're a preacher and you're looking for it...

Todd rolls his shoulders, stretches his neck like a boxer. He knows how formidable he can appear—even in a silk shirt and tailored three-piece suit—and he works it, stands tall and broadens his stance to dominate the room, makes sure to highlight the fresh bruise on his face, the red silk lingerie crushed in his hand, and if his state of arousal is obvious, all the better. He flashes a menacing grin when Andrew's eyes land on him, keeps grinning when those eyes dart past him to the disheveled bed and Téa's dress in a heap on the floor.

"I knew it!" Andrew yowls. "That BASTARD!" He drops his head like a bull, starts to charge Todd but Téa leaps in front of him, and again when he tries to sidestep her.

"No, Andrew! It's nothing like that. You insisted on seeing me... well, here I am," she says with an impressive amount of dignity.

Andrew drags murderous eyes away from Todd, shakes his head and refocuses on Téa, his attitude softening. Todd watches them as they stand there, too close to one another, and he evaluates their body language, clenches his jaw to control his loathing. 

Andrew examines Téa slowly, deliberately, like he's searching for something beyond the flush in her cheeks, the sheen of perspiration on her brow... something deeper, private...

And Todd's gut twists painfully as he realizes that Andrew seems to know her, seems to be looking for signs he'd recognize—signs that she's just been fucked.

Images explode in Todd's mind of the two of them—Téa naked on top of Andrew, riding that piece of shit as enthusiastically as she'd ridden him, moaning Andrew's name in that deep, musical way of hers, his boney fingers clutching her hips... and then Todd is spinning out, spinning and nauseous and he lands hard in the penthouse, looks down to find two naked bodies rolling together on the white rug—and red rage ignites in his chest, ripples down his arms, curls his hands into fists...

But a sound hits his ears, so familiar that it stops him cold—male despair, deep grief... 

"Oh, oh no... you didn't—not with him—"

"I'm so sorry," she says gently, voice thick with tears.

They're standing together, framed in the open doorway of the penthouse, an intimate energy between them, and Todd is on the outside looking in, shot through with anxiety, sweat breaking over his face. That asshole saw something that convinced him... what did he see, how did he know... ? He must have fucked her repeatedly, not just this one time on the penthouse floor. Everything disappears but that certainty, eating through him like acid. He barely feels his legs propelling him, barely recognizes his own voice growling low... 

"Get out, get the hell out of my house, Thornhart, before I rip your head off..."

Two sets of stunned brown eyes turn to him as he advances. They're afraid... they should be terrified after what he saw them doing...

"Todd..." a soft voice drifts over him, confused, urgent. "You... you know that this isn't Patrick..."

But he glares venom at the two of them, cowering there, whispering together, trying to pretend that he hasn't caught them red-handed, betraying him while he's dead and gone at the bottom of the cold dark Irish Sea...

"Téa, is he all right?"

"He's just... I don't know... Todd, please."

"Téa, he's unstable. You have to leave with me, now."

"You're not fucking taking her anywhere!"

With a roar, Todd launches himself at a wide-eyed Patrick Thornhart, gets his fingers on the scrawny throat. He starts to dig in but loses his grip when another body collides with his. Legs kick and hands push at him in a chaos of shouts and cries, but he's laser-focused on that ugly face, won't be satisfied until it's smashed and bloody. He's knocked off balance, rights himself, takes a punch to the gut but keeps grappling, grunting with rage, frustration, both hands high, fingers clutching... but Thornhart feints, ducks, stumbles away like the shit-coward he is and as Todd turns to follow him, he spots a small body in a low crouch nearby, eyes narrow, teeth bared. Without a cry it lunges, it's bony shoulder hitting him square in the chest and he's thrown back, fire spreading from the point of impact, breath rushing from his lungs...

"Get a grip, Todd! Stop this!"

He doubles over, coughing and gasping like a revived drowning victim. Rage still scorches his veins, his fingers flex, his eyes are fixed on Thornhart as he crouches in a boxing stance, fists up. But dark eyes get in the way, and then a face, red and furious—Delgado's face. Todd snarls at her, humiliated that she got the best of him in front of that asshole, leans down but Thornhart gets between them, poised to strike. Todd eases back with a sneer, oddly grateful that Delgado has someone looking out for her—the hairy poet always was protective of his women—although this one can obviously take care of herself...

"Always beating me up," he chokes out; some humor to mask the shame.

"Always acting like a  _pendejo_!" she says with a little wail.

Todd drops his hands to his thighs, rests there until his chest is loose enough to let him suck in some air. He pushes upright, ready for another go, stamps and snorts a warning, but it's not Patrick Thornhart he sees standing in front of his wife, her restraining hand on his arm. It's the sniveling face of Andrew Carpenter.

The room tilts—the hotel room, not the penthouse—but Todd stays upright, tries to shake confusion and old dreams from his head. "Whatever," he rasps, turns left, then right, stops and stares at nothing because nothing is the only thing that makes any sense. "Whatever. Just get rid of him."

"Look at him!" Andrew cries, all indignant, so shrill it makes Todd flinch. "Why are you protecting him, Téa? That—," Andrew continues, flinging a hand toward the bed. "Couldn't possibly have been consensual!"

But there's something in his voice, an edge of desperation, like he knows very well it was consensual... that in fact, it was all Téa's idea, and who the hell could blame her. But he can't accept that truth, is still frantic to see what he wants to see, to salvage something of his illusions...

And as Todd is working to orient himself, that whiney tone is so familiar that it slices through the fog and he closes his eyes, cocks his head, searches his memory... and there—he gasps and flushes hot because that was  _him_ , only minutes ago... the same whine, the same pathetic expression, the same...

 _Begging_.

And he knows where it started, sees the field of play in his mind's eye, hears her voice again, sultry, seductive, setting him up for humiliation...

_We could go up to my room... I'm sure we could find a way to... communicate..._

And he finds himself in the un-fucking-believable position of feeling not only seething hatred and contempt for Reverend Andrew Carpenter, but outright pity. Because he knows without a doubt that the idiot loves Delgado... and that she's playing him for a fool.

Just like she's been playing  _him_ , all along, from the very beginning, for her own ends. He's absolutely convinced of it now, and reels with shock, but has no time to process it...

"That animal must have forced you!"

He looks up at the voice and finds hostile eyes leveled at him... by the very hypocrite who's been fucking his wife. Instantly the sympathy vanishes. Todd sneers, barrels forward again all chest and attitude, and Andrew stiffens, teeth clenched, fists high. Years of conflict and mutual loathing are on the verge of erupting, destroying everything in its path...

But Téa steps in front of Todd, all puffed up like she actually believes she could knock him on his ass. She glares up at him, arms folded over her chest, all but tapping that bare foot of hers, daring him, mocking him...

Go on, try it...

Todd harnesses the energy of his Andrew-hate, reconstitutes it as predatory hunger, and redirects it at Téa, leering at her the way a wolf might leer at a fluffy bunny. A lying, cheating, ruthless fluffy bunny. Her eyes narrow with the slightest bit of self-doubt... just enough to satisfy him.

"Is this really what you want, Téa?" Andrew whines from behind her, breaking the standoff. Todd cringes at the sound, but for a completely different reason now... it reminds him too much of his own weakness... and his wife's betrayal.

_Poor mixed up, IMPOTENT Todd. Our marriage was a joke because you were never MAN enough to make it real..._

He shakes it off, refocuses. "What she wants is none of your damn business," he growls and feints a lunge, both to shut Andrew up and to watch him get all fluttery... but he's distracted by a shimmering puddle of blood on the floor. He nudges it with his foot, reaches down and scoops up red silk... two pieces: a thin bra and panties. Blood red. It doesn't seem to bother him now, doesn't conjure ghosts of blizzards and failed seductions. He rubs the material between his fingers, imagines peeling it from Téa's conniving body...

"I will speak for myself, Todd," she says, her bravado lessening as she watches him manhandle her underwear. She sets her jaw and pointedly turns away from him.

"Andrew, I—"

"Half an hour," Todd interrupts.

"What?" she gasps over her shoulder like he suggested a threesome.

"I said, give me half an hour. You won't give me a four-week trial reconciliation, the least you can do is give me thirty minutes." He's speaking to her, but his eyes are fixed on Andrew, silently telegraphing...  _just give it up, man, for your own sake... she's fucking with you..._

"No, Todd," Téa says, keeping her back to him like a rejection, but her voice is thin. "Not half an hour, not half a minute. I've given you far too much time as it is. I need you to leave."

"You heard her, Todd," Andrew says, leaping forward like a dog responding to a whistle. He's one who would happily hold his own leash, no doubt about it. He's perfect for her, really; the ideal little lap dog.

"I did hear her," Todd says, feeling nasty. The silk is so fragile in his hands, so easy to tear. "But you should know that Delgado doesn't always say what she means. Do you, Delgado?" He reaches up with his free hand and possessively tucks her hair behind her ear. She jerks away with a startled yelp... but not before the various and unmistakeable red marks on her throat appear to the eyes of Reverend Carpenter. His face curdles, mouth twists with disgust.

Todd catches Andrew's eyes before they move too far away. He locks in, makes sure Andrew is watching as he drops his chin and gives him a very slow, very seductive smile, full of implications. He licks his lips, lets his gaze travel down Andrew's body until the good reverend blushes from his hairline to his clerical collar.

"I mean it, Todd. Get out." Téa is hissing at him, completely unaware of the new heat in the room. "Andrew," she says as though to enlist his aid, eyes clapping on his suddenly red face. "Andrew... what is it?"

"I think Andy is reconsidering his... position," Todd says, dripping malice. He's just confirmed something he's always suspected about Andrew's...  _intensity_  toward him... and he eyes him ruthlessly.

"Come on, Téa." Andrew grabs for her arm, voice rough, teeth gritted, eyes anywhere but on Todd. "We're getting out of here."

Todd moves quickly to the still-open door to block an escape. He folds his arms, winces from the fresh shoulder-shaped bruise on his chest, pushes out his biceps with his knuckles and leans casually against the door frame. "I don't think Delgado is gonna let me drive her out into the world in nothing but a bathrobe again... not twice in one lifetime, huh Delgado?"

"That's a joke to you, Todd?" Andrew cries. "Throwing her out into a blizzard is funny to you?"

But Todd's eyes are on Téa. Her face seems to darken with the memory, her body drawing in on itself as though to protect an unhealed wound. So it does still linger... the pain of that night. Just like it does for him...

"No, it's not funny," he says. "In fact, that's one of my—," he breaks off at the sudden, unwelcome sting behind his eyes.

Téa looks up at him warily, brow lifted in that frustratingly expectant way of hers. He shifts his weight, not sure how much to say in front of Andrew, but whatever...

"Delgado and I keep... we keep hurting each other, don't we Delgado?"

"You keep hurting  _me_ ," she snaps, defensive as hell. She's giving him a lot to grab onto now... just the way he likes it.

"Oh, right... it's all me," Todd says. "You've never done anything... like, say, down in the bar this afternoon... or that crack about my mother..."

She lowers her eyes, mouth tight, jaw clenching.

"Téa?" Andrew says, looking from one to the other like they're speaking Mandarin.

"Thirty minutes, Delgado. That's all I'm asking. You feel bad about what you did, right? That's why you let me in here in the first place, why you made Andy leave. You owe me another chance."

Téa laughs sourly. "I gave you another chance, Todd!" she says. "And another and another and another after that..." Andrew lays a hand on her arm—soothing, possessive, don't-forget-about-me... whatever it is, Todd doesn't like it one bit. She lets it stay there.

"Things are different now, Delgado," Todd says and looks pointedly at the bed. Téa shoots a veiled glance at Andrew, Andrew scowls at Todd. "It just... it took me awhile to catch up, okay?"

Oh, her beautiful face... so open to him, no longer shielded, so readable now. She's suspicious, but there's curiosity there, too... intrigue. She's almost hooked... almost  _hopeful_...

"Thirty minutes. That's all. I need you to do this for me, Téa."

"Enough." Andrew moves, gets between them, separating wife from husband yet again. He faces Téa, takes her shoulders. "Don't listen to him," he says, looking down at her with those sappy dog eyes of his. "Don't you see? He's trying to prey on your goodness."

Todd huffs a laugh, clears his throat to cover. He's scalding with rage at seeing Bible Boy's boney hands all over her, but this is delicate, needs to be handled with finesse...

Téa shakes her head, shrugs out of Andrew's grasp and backs away from both of them, eyes darting from one to the other as though trying to gauge the level of threat each man poses. She turns her back and makes a sound—an awful, stricken sound, like an animal with its leg in the jaws of a trap. Todd has been playing it cool on the outside, but his heart is pounding, mouth dry... at this point, she might decide to chew that leg off rather than spend another minute with either of them.

She turns back with tears in her eyes. "Okay, Todd. Why? Why do you  _need_  me to do this for you?"

Ah, there it is, the perfect pass, spiraling against the clear blue sky... all he has to do is reach up and pluck it from the air. It's so hard not to smile...

He'd been done with games, with lies... but that was before Andrew made him see the truth about her. He gets serious and vulnerable, calibrates his voice, decides to put a break and slight catch just there, makes sure she's looking right into his eyes so the effort isn't wasted. 

"You know why," he says quietly.

Problem is... he means it. And he doesn't. Both, equally. He'll figure it out later. Right now, what he needs is to get her alone.

Téa's color drains, then floods back in one glorious blush. "Using my own words against me?" she says, voice small and tight, laced with pain.

"It's what I do best," he says, downshifting to simulate heartfelt banter. He glances sidelong at Andrew, gives him a cheesy wink. "Well, one of the things." Andrew glowers at him, but Todd barely has a chance to enjoy it... Téa is crying now, head held high and struggling for dignity. That damned dignity. A woman in pain, begging him to stop... and the lights in the room blaze down again and scorch his skin, the monster's skin, so hot that Todd is rendered mute, choked by doubt. He stares at the progress of a tear, shining as it rolls down the curve of Téa's cheek... it reaches her jaw, hangs for a moment then lets go, splashing onto her robe just above her left breast. A small, dark, perfect circle.

_You're hurting me so much..._

It's not too late to let her go...

He feels the tug of the void yawning below, the fresh terror of plummeting alone through barren space and disappearing into the jaws of the monster. He stares at that dark, perfect circle like it's the doorway to hell, but a realization is forming, crystalizing like a dream suddenly remembered... yes, it's terrifying to fall, but it's comforting, too... it's a feeling he's known since childhood, like his own name... and maybe he's meant to fall. Maybe it's his destiny, to just stop fighting, to remove the leash...

He looks up at Téa's face, streaked again with more of those manipulative tears that come so easily to her... that she uses to play men, to humiliate them...

No. She's not the one. Stupid to think that someone every bit as selfish and ruthless and cruel as Todd himself is could actually  _save_  him. She's no fucking savior... and she's certainly no innocent victim—just ask Andrew. No, she's not the one.

_I am not you're goddamned MOTHER..._

There is no one. No one at all. 

His destiny is to fall... and maybe it's hers to go with him.

"Is this it, Todd?" Téa whispers, half plea, half accusation. "Is this your Hail Mary pass?"

"Whole ball game," Todd says, struggling to keep the malice from his voice. "Thirty minutes. Then if you still want me to go, I'll go. If you still want the divorce... it's yours."

"Swear on Starr's life," she says sharply, suddenly all lawyer. Her eyes bore into him like a diamond drill, right down to the heart of him and fuck, that's cold. That's so cold... so  _her_. It's the only oath in the world he'd honor, and she knows it. He nods, barely. "Okay. Yeah."

"Téa? Téa!" Andrew wails. They both ignore him.

Téa's eyes stay on Todd but her focus slips inside herself... he feels her energy shifting with every facial expression, and he's motionless as a panther in tall grass, watching, waiting, holding her lingerie in his hand like a talisman... and even before she speaks, he sees the moment of surrender in her body—the softening, the draining away of resistance—feels it as acutely as if she were straddling him, her arms around him, her lips in his hair...

" _Pinche cabrón_ ," she breathes like a curse. "Fuck you. Oh, fuck you."

"Delgado! Not in front of the Reverend!" Todd cries in mock horror to mask the triumph, the malignant joy, coursing through him. He turns vicious eyes to Andrew, watches his pasty face melt with disbelief, pain... nausea...

"Oh, Téa...," Andrew moans and stares at her hard for a long moment, as though searching for that private, familiar thing he can reach, can knock some sense into.

She holds her head high and meets his eyes. "Trust me," she says firmly, despite the tears still slipping down her cheeks. But Andrew sags like a guy who placed fourth in the Olympics—not even a bronze. He turns from her and shuffles out the door, head slowly swaying from side to side. Todd especially enjoys the small, mournful sounds he makes as he fades away down the hall... until he recognizes those sounds as ones he himself made, not long ago.

Because of  _her_.

He's achieved his aim and can let the hate come now... and whatever else wants to come with it. He presses red silk to the bruise on his cheek, turns his attention to Téa... she's leaning out the door, calling after Andrew...

"I'll meet you downstairs in half an hour!"

No one believes her.

 


	7. Chapter 7

"Well, that was just... sad," Todd says, brushing against Téa as he saunters back into her hotel room. "Don't you think that was sad, Delgado?"

She looks down the hall and watches Andrew disappear into the elevator without a backward glance. Again.

"I think this whole situation is sad, Todd," she says, closing the door gently. It's deliberate; she can't bear to hear the percussive click of that latch again, so often has she closed this damned door, leaned her forehead against the cool wood to prepare for battle, collect her thoughts, justify her actions to herself... not just with Todd, but a dozen nights before when she turned Andrew away with promises of _soon, be patient, I know what I'm doing... trust me..._

But after seeing the disappointment, the _despair_ , on his face tonight, it's crystal clear to her that she's been lying to all of them. And she was the last one to know it.

"So, I guess I should thank you for giving me another shot, Téa." Todd's tone is so saccharine that he has to be mocking her... and why not? He won, after all—got rid of Andrew, got her alone by offering an uncontested divorce in exchange for thirty measly minutes. How could she walk away from that?

Or the slight possibility that he was sincere?

_You know why..._

He dangled that priceless carrot in front of her, and the idiot part of her wanted to believe him. As usual. But things are different now—she knew it the instant she saw the flash of contempt on his face. It wasn't contempt for Andrew, but for _her_ , and it signaled a profound shift that made her blood run cold. Throughout their dealings, their wranglings and feuds, she always felt that, at the very least, Todd respected her. Now that's gone, and with it, a sort of... protection.

She wipes away the last of her tears. "Don't waste your breath, Todd, and don't insult my intelligence," she says. "I know you were playing me." She hears a small sound of surprise, followed by a grunt.

"Whatever. I'm pretty much out of bullshit anyway."

"That'll be the day," she says. "But the deal stands... you swore on Starr's life." She closes her eyes, leans into the solid support of the door and thinks of her mother... the white silk blouse, the bruises, the frantic, shining eyes. How well Téa understands it all now. She could have fled with Andrew as she is—barefoot and naked under this hotel bathrobe—and kept the charade going. But for how long? How long before she'd be back, needing another hit of this madman, desperate to draw him into her veins in order to feel alive...

Andrew. Kind, loving, gentle Andrew. He never stood a chance.

Todd's presence is large behind her. He's prowling and seething, all fawning pretense gone. She torpedoed his strategy by calling him out on his lies, and now he has to regroup; but one thing's for certain—she's not getting out unscathed.

She tries to relax and prepare herself, winces at the growing ache in her shoulder that resulted from derailing Todd's attack on Andrew. He's more insane and violent tonight than usual, and she knows a lot of it is her fault—she did try to con him in the Palace Bar, she impugned his precious manhood, initiated a sexual encounter he clearly wasn't ready for, rejected him when he'd opened up to her. But the wildcard in all this is that twisted, sleep-deprived psyche of his that's hurtling him through time and space and God knows what situation it will deposit him in next, what black memory he'll lash out from...

But he's not lost in a memory now—he's right here. She can feel his eyes laser-focused on her back, his body as still and silent as a jungle cat's. He's creating negative space that she'd ordinarily feel compelled to fill out of apprehension, a need for control; but she doesn't turn around, doesn't speak. This is his game...let him plot, let him waste time figuring out his opening gambit. She's holding him to their agreement—thirty minutes, that's all. And whatever happens is worth it. She'll be free to leave this mess.

And she will this time.

Del appears in her mind as though summoned, his round face sad and scolding. _Don't kid a kidder, mija... look at yourself... really look..._

She squeezes her eyes shut instead, but feels her heart sinking under the weight of a very hard truth... the same truth she saw in Andrew's face—

Of course she won't leave.

She _can't_.

She's trapped. Everything that's happened in this room today confirms it. She's trapped in the sticky black tar of Todd—his suffering, his enormous need, her own twisted compulsion to save him—and nothing she's tried so far has freed her. She's glad that he's giving her space and time so she can absorb this truth into her bones and review her past failed strategies. Will power didn't work. Neither did bargaining or threats or outright begging. She once thought that getting him into bed would also get him out of her system, but it only made things worse. So here they are; his hold on her is as absolute and deadly as an addiction, and she's feels utterly powerless to break it.

Despair spreads through her like darkness. She no longer recognizes herself as the strong, smart, independent woman she once was. Todd's breathing is steady and strong behind her... her own is thready and weak by comparison. On the other side of this door is freedom, if only she could open it...

And suddenly she's outside her parent's bedroom again, watching them as their own heavy door slowly creaks closed under its own weight. This memory is new, but so clear and available that she can almost walk into it. She smells _sofrito_ simmering on the kitchen stove, hears the whine of the building's elevator though the wall. She sees that her father has her mother by the throat and he's screaming at her in slurred Spanglish: _You make yourself too desirable!_ _They're all talking about you... they're all saying that one man isn't enough to fill that chocho of yours! I can smell them on you, you puta, those men and their stench, their leche!_ And then his fists begin to rise and fall, raining down heavy blows on her mother's frail body. But this time, in this new memory, her mother doesn't fight. In other memories, she fought, shouted back, tried to block him. Once, in a panic, Téa tried to throw herself between them, but her mother's screams of terror sliced her to the core and from then on Téa just crept toward the sounds of violence, hid herself and _witnessed_ , because if there was a witness—even an unseen one—her mother couldn't die. So in this new memory, Téa is watching from the hallway on her knees, hands clutched over her chest in prayer. She sees her mother _not fight_ , her body jerking this way and that under brutal fists, her slender arms hanging loose, swaying like the arms of a rag doll...

And... her _face_. From her room at the Palace Hotel, with a madman at her back, Téa watches a smile spread slowly over her mother's face as she accepts her beating—a beautiful smile, peaceful... and so strange. And then it vanishes from view with the click of the heavy door.

That beating was the last beating. The next day, her mother was gone.

_Click._

Téa flinches. It's Todd, reaching up from behind her, locking the deadbolt, hand lingering there. She's shaken by his invasion, needs time to recover from the shock of the new memory and understand its significance. Her eyes are drawn sideways to the wildly expensive watch on his wrist; the hands read 6:24. Is that all? It feels like the middle of next week. Normal people are just finishing dinner, switching on the evening news. Normal people... she could be normal again. In thirty minutes, she could be normal again...

And like he's reading her mind, he says soft and low by her ear, "Thirty minutes, starting now. How much damage do you think we can do to each other in thirty minutes, Delgado?"

Memories of pain, insanity and rough, glorious sex flood her mind, heat her blood... but she still feels like the child kneeling in that hallway, violence so close, her heart pounding like her father's fists...

"Incalculable," she says.

"Better get started then." His voice is gravelly, dripping malice... the man from the Palace Bar...

_If I ever throw you out of a window, there won't be anyone around to watch..._

He closes in on her then, a sudden storm of energy and heat, and presses his body hard against hers like a threat. He inhales deeply, seems to absorb her vitality and diminish her until she's cringing and breathless...

"My so-called father used to say that all women are liars and users," he says like acid. "What do you think about that, Delgado?"

She clenches her teeth to keep her voice from trembling and goes for nonchalant. "I'm surprised you'd give credence to anything Peter Manning had to say."

She feels a stab of anger at herself—she should turn around, get in his face, demand that he back off. The old Téa would have; she wouldn't understand this _timidity._ He's never hurt her, he's never even come close... except, she reminds herself, when he _did_. She flashes on how he assaulted her on the sofa when he was lost in a memory. She stood up to him then, but she's so much weaker now and half lost in memories herself—of doors and threats and fists, the past merging with the present—and she's vividly aware of his new, palpable contempt for her, unnerved that he'd invoke his own violent father...

"He was a miserable bastard, my old man, but he knew a thing or two," Todd says, his long, tapered fingers stroking the curved metal of the lock. "I was so sure you were different, Delgado. You got me custody of my kid. You were a decent enough stepmom to her—,"

"—I love that child," she says reflexively, and wonders if her own mother said the same thing about her once... even after she chose survival over her own daughter. She sees her mother again, moving slowly behind her father in his plaid armchair. Her fingers are drifting through his thick black hair, lingering as he silently reads his evening newspaper before he curses and bats her hand away...

And it hits Téa like a bolt from the blue that an addict can both passionately love and passionately hate the drug that's killing them. And that maybe the only way to break the addiction, the only way to survive, is to feed the hate—make the revulsion stronger than the craving, _force the hate to win_...

"And that child loves you," Todd is saying. "But see, that's the thing about kids; they're innocent, they're trusting." His voice sinks into a dark, liquid cruelty that makes the back of Téa's neck tighten. "They don't know what people are really like. Not until it's too late."

She knows he's accusing her of something, but it barely registers. Her eyes are closed and she's watching her mother's face again—the beautiful, strange smile as the blows rain down for the last time...

_Force the hate to win..._

And as Todd plays his games, his breath hot on her cheek, Téa understands what that smile means...

_Freedom._

She needs a few beats to process it, to consider whether it's possible, or even _desirable_ , to go there with Todd. She reaches out for a passing thought in order to both stall and distract herself from feeling him so vividly behind her...

"Starr... yes... speaking of Starr, where is she?" she stammers, clears her throat. "Shouldn't you be getting back to her?"

He makes an annoyed sound, seems caught off guard by the tangent. "She... Viki wanted her for the weekend. Some kiddie thing at church."

Téa hears it so clearly in his voice—the note of desolation whenever he's separated from Starr. She digs her nails into her palm so she won't devolve into actual compassion.

"Oh," she says. "You must miss her."

"Eh. Gives me a chance to catch up on my knitting. Speaking of church—and sinning..."

He moves his fingers from the deadbolt and she feels them touching the ends of her hair. "You know, your preacher has the hots for me."

The statement is so absurd that she starts to bark out a laugh, but it dies in mid-air; there's such _intensity_ between Todd and Andrew that she can't quite dismiss it...

"Well," she says. "You do have a tendency to... trigger people's deeper impulses, Todd."

She feels his fingers lift her hair from her neck, and then his mouth is there, lips and breath brushing her skin. It's a shockingly erotic move for him... one she feels right down to her toes.

"What deeper impulses do I trigger in you, Delgado?" he whispers. "Besides lying, cheating, manipulating... no wait, those aren't deep at all, those are right there on the surface, aren't they? Natural as breathing."

Téa stiffens at the attack, starts to ask what the hell he's talking about, but she's struck dumb when he suddenly grinds his pelvis against her backside.

"So," he purrs. "Do you think that Andy's thinking of me, when he's fucking you?"

She shoves back hard with an involuntary cry of disgust, elbows digging and shoulders twisting. He laughs that high, nasty laugh of his and eases off just enough to let her spin around, but not get away. His hands are planted on either side of her head, body close, eyes hot. His loss of respect for her clearly hasn't left a vacuum; he's radiating a predator's confidence, a kind of ruthless lust—the alpha male bent on reclaiming his territory. It's an overwhelming energy that makes her want to cower...

... _cower under brutal fists that pound and leave flesh bruised and purple_...

Téa snaps upright, all timidity suddenly blasted away by this painful image of her mother. She glares squarely into Todd's eyes with an almost violent resolve. She searches him, but there's no sign of the broken child now, nothing that might burden her with compassion or remorse or that crippling sense of inadequacy...

_Feed the hate... force the hate to win..._

And she won't even need witnesses this time.

She steels herself, tilts her head and laughs. "So is this your plan, Todd? Thirty minutes of mildly threatening banter?"

His face darkens. "Would you prefer genuinely threatening banter? I can do that, too." He opens his fist and there's her silk lingerie. "You were gonna wear these for _him,_ " he snarls, shoving it toward her face.

She doesn't react to his belligerence in the least, just bites her lower lip and smiles. "What can I say? He likes me in red."

His sneer of hatred hits her like a punch, but she just absorbs it, raises her brow and watches his jaw work and nostrils flare. He's such a stranger to her now that she half expects an actual blow... but he suddenly straightens up, steps back with a slow, evil grin and locks his eyes on her throat.

" _Hickey_ is such a stupid word, isn't it?" he drawls.

It takes her less than a second to put two and two together. "Oh, God," she groans before she can stop herself. She pushes off from the door and moves around the unyielding mass of him toward the mirror mounted on the dresser. As she watches her own approach, sees the familiar face in the chaos, her anxiety lessens... and getting away from Todd's aggressive, voluptuous haze is like stepping out of a tawdry strip club and into broad daylight. By the time she reaches the mirror she feels like herself again. She leans her pelvis into the hard edge of the dresser, pulls her hair aside and angles her chin left then right to better see the flaming red marks on her throat. Two are darkening to bruises, one of them has distinct teeth marks—souvenirs of his rough passion and desperate, wild fucking. Her vulva clenches at the memory. Three marks are fresher... she recalls the iron-strength of his arms around her, the hot pleasure of being restrained...

Until Andrew's shattered face intrudes...

_Oh Téa, you didn't... not with him..._

_Puta. Slut. Whore._

"I prefer _love bite_ ," she says abruptly, too loudly, trying to drown out words and voices. She darts a glance at Todd's reflection as he relaxes back against the door, so pleased with himself, nonchalantly crossing one ankle over the other and regarding her with a lewd smile.

"I like _oral branding_."

Her gut does a little flip. Sexy. Yes, very sexy. She's glad to be over here, away from him. The bastard.

"That was a shit move, Todd, even for you."

"Yeah, well that's why I'm still here and not in the bar knocking back doubles like Reverend Andy." He raises a hand and twirls her underwear on his forefinger.

She forces out a long, slow breath through clenched teeth. Oh, Andrew. Poor Andrew. She promised him so much but gave him so little, put him off again and again. He knows all about her now... Todd made sure of that. And still... _still_ , he cared enough to cling to his illusions and try to rescue her...

_Don't you see? He's trying to prey on your goodness..._

She must be _insane_ —

A sudden movement snaps her attention to the mirror and she flinches to find Todd right behind her, settling into his now-customary position at her back, and pressing in close.

"Six," he says, eyeing the marks on her neck. "There's one behind your ear... a little harder to see. He probably missed that one." He shoves his left hand into her hair, lifts it up and away, obviously feeling far too free to touch her whenever, maybe _wherever_ , he wants. Good. She doesn't try to stop him; his aggression will be necessary. And his touch isn't entirely... _unwelcome_. She meets his eyes in the mirror and watches him as intently as he's watching her, each of them evaluating and challenging the other—their reflection an intimate portrait of suppressed emotions and hidden agendas. The crackle between them is palpable and works its way inside her, sets her body to buzzing. He's so close, so beautiful—all light eyes, full lips, flowing hair—and maybe she's been misreading him, maybe she's got this all wrong...

He dips his chin and his eyes disappear into blackness beneath his heavy brow. "Like I said." He raises his right hand and presses the red lingerie under her jaw like a bloody blade. "No fucking way were you leaving with him."

She goes cold with shock at the image and at his malevolent growl. No, she wasn't wrong. This man is a powder keg—he's exhausted and delusional, he attacked Andrew with no provocation, he assaulted her on the sofa... and that was _before_ he turned on her for no reason. Things have changed... and she's definitely no longer safe.

Yet, if she really is her mother's daughter, she's about to embark a very dangerous game...

Sudden doubt grabs her by the scruff of the neck, shakes her until she's dizzy. No. No, she's nothing like her mother. That smile was a lifetime ago and the circumstances are entirely different... Téa is a wealthy, educated woman, and she has other options...

She finds that her eyes have drifted to the door and are fixed on it, that her heart is pounding. Her mind is spinning out alternatives scenarios, excuses to leave this madness—if only temporarily, until she _needs_ him again—and run, find some sanity, some tenderness, find—

"Go on."

She jumps at the sound of Todd's voice.

"Go running after him," he purrs. "Good luck getting him to take you back now." He fists her hair, pulls her head to one side, showcasing his handiwork. "What'll you do, huh Delgado, now that your safety net is gone?"

Her innate dignity flares at that, straightens her spine, sets her jaw. "Andrew didn't leave because of _this_ ," she says like ice. "It was my decision to stay, to endure thirty minutes with you and get my divorce. My decision, Todd. Not Andrew's. And certainly not _yours_."

"That's right. Your choice, Delgado," he says, gaze sliding down the loose, open neckline of her robe, stopping at the flushed skin between her breasts. He lingers there, so at ease, so _entitled,_ and closes his hand over her throat. "Remember that. Whatever happens."

Téa fights down a stab of genuine fear and snaps to his face in the mirror... his eyes are glittering, mouth curled in that sneer of hatred. It doesn't matter _why_... whether this is sexual jealousy, revenge, a delusion or something else... everything in her says to go, run... _now_...

But running means prolonging the agony, and she may never have a better opportunity. He's so volatile—all it will take to free herself forever is one little push. The knowledge is like a knife in her heart. She swallows down a sudden lump of tears and stares pointedly at the reflection of his watch beneath her jaw.

" _Is_ something going to happen, Todd?" she says, trying to sound bored but acutely aware of his eyes on her breasts. "Tick-tock, tick-tock... you've got me alone, you've humiliated Andrew... come on, what's next?"

"Just going with the flow, Delgado," he says, languid now, taking his time like a cat with a mouse, confident of his superior position, eyes caressing her cleavage like fingers. "Didn't you tell me that at the Bayberry Inn, when you were trying to get me in the sack... that I should _go with the flow_?" He starts to move her head around, his hands working together to rotate, lift, tilt—as though he's searching for he perfect angle. She knows she could put a stop to it with a word, but she lets him manhandle her despite mounting annoyance, despite wishing he would just lose the red underwear already, instead of using it like a prop...

"Oh, and for the record," he says. "You're the one humiliating Andy, not me... or _were_. Poor guy."

"He's _Poor Guy_ now? Whatever happened to—oh, what's my favorite—sanctimonious Bible-belching hypocrite?"

"You know me, always rooting for the underdog."

"Oh, please, since when?"

"Since that idiot loves you, and you're stomping the shit out of him." He pinches her jaw and turns her face to the mirror.

She watches herself flush... because he's right. And he's clearly trying to make a point. Maybe this is why—

She freezes in mid-thought as his other hand drops to the belt of her robe.

"You and I are a lot alike, Delgado." His voice softens as she lets him slowly untie the loose knot. "When I told you that downstairs it was mostly to piss you off, but I really see it now. We'll do anything to get what we want, no matter who it hurts."

_You know why you'll never leave me? What you just did... we're more alike than you think..._

She tries to shake her head to banish the memory of his words from the bar, but he holds her face hard toward the mirror with one hand and pushes open the lapels of her robe with the other, exposing her breasts.

"Look at yourself," he whispers thickly into her hair. "Jesus, look at you."

She looks at the ceiling instead, partly to remain detached, but more so because she knows what she'd see—her body reacting to the aggression and erotic stimuli of this strange new Todd, to his voice dripping heat and his eyes on her naked breasts...

He lets go of her jaw and returns his hand to the column of her neck, rubs his thumb over one of his _oral brands_. "Yeah, look at that," he murmurs.

She braces herself, knows what's coming, tries to disconnect as he leans down and his hair falls forward over her shoulder, softly tickling... a veil that hides his tongue as it runs along the curve where her shoulder meets her throat. But she feels it; it's like a fucking trigger he's trained her to respond to, the bell to Pavlov's dogs—and her body betrays her utterly. She wants to cringe away but instead she shivers and strains toward his mouth as he bites down with sharp teeth and hot-wet breath, sucks like he did so many times before, staking his claim. She's disgusted with herself but can't keep her hand from flying into his hair and pulling him closer, can't keep her head from falling to the side or her neck from arching under his palm like a swan's neck, offering its delicate, fragile self to him at impossible angles, chasing the pleasure/pain, aching for just a little bit more...

 _Stop this, stop_... she says, but not out loud.

Her eyes are closed; she can't watch the spectacle, but she feels his hand move, dragging her silk lingerie over her collarbone, followed by his thumb; he lingers there, stroking the taut skin, and stops torturing her throat long enough to speak...

"Open your eyes and watch," he says, and waits until she does. "This is like you, see? Soft and smooth on the outside, hard and brittle underneath."

It's almost poetic, but she doesn't have a chance to react—he latches onto her throat again, and if she weren't seeing it for herself, she'd never believe that this is fearful, fretful, painfully repressed _Todd_. His eyes drill into hers in the mirror, half-lidded, challenging... and for the first time she appreciates the cover art of bodice-rippers, why they feature just this image, because _damn_. Her body is flush with its own recent, intimate memories of him, it wants _more_ , and drops back against him with an embarrassing moan.

The silk is in play again, and she watches, can't not watch; it's held and controlled by a very large, very masculine hand that slides slowly over the upper curves of her breasts, grazing her taut nipples, then between and down... and he's watching her too, eyes hot, intense—so fucking sure of himself, a natural in this sexually dominant role.

She's turned on. Of course she is... so turned on, but this is not the way this was supposed to go. Screw it. Forget the plan, forget everything...

He's licking the curve of her ear, rocking an unmistakable erection against her ass. Her fingers tighten in his hair as he moves lower and she feels less silk and more of his hand with each caress, more hot palm pressing her stomach, more fingertips stroking and trailing lower with crazy-making slowness. She arches her back, urges him on even as the old, ugly words attack her mind. She knows how she looks, _puta slut whore_... but this is so hot and so good—they are so fucking good together and they could have this for real, if only they could turn back the clock, or the stars would realign or he would stop being such an insane bastard... but they have it _now_ and maybe that shouldn't eclipse all the games, cruelty and misery, but right now it does. It does.

Still, she realizes like a cold slap, this could all be a trick... he could be laughing at her. She finds his eyes in the mirror again—his pupils are blown wide and black, his face is flushed and damp with perspiration—and she remembers that expression from the bed, when she was on top of him and he was so close to losing control...

He moves his hand lower, with more urgency now, his breath ragged and shallow, and when she feels his fingers carding through the soft curls between her legs, the silk lingerie dangling, tickling her parting thighs, she convulses, swallows an obscene moan and whispers, "Please, Todd... _please_..."

" _Yeah_ ," he groans hot in her ear, sending a shockwave through her body. He thrusts himself against her ass, grabs her jaw and shoves her head back with so much force she cries out. "At least Andy got to see what a hot little piece of ass you are," he hisses. "You come as hard for him as you came for me, Delgado?"

He yanks his hands away from her body and steps back, leaving her to stumble and grab the dresser for support... and it's like she's been pushed off a cliff—falling fast, air rushing by but she can't get any. It takes a few moments before she's able to react, before she erupts and wheels on him, fists high, snarling with rage and humiliation, "You fucking _cabrón_!"

But he grabs her shoulders, his fingers digging into her bruise. He roughly turns her back around and grinds into her with a very hard erection, crushing her pelvis into the sharp edge of the dresser, making the attached mirror wobble and bang the wall.

"You're not going anywhere," he growls.

A small voice inside says, _yes, this is it, keep it going and you'll be free..._

But this is no time for logic.

"Let me go, _hijo de puta_!" she howls, the pain of his grip only adding fuel to her bonfire of shame and fury. Again! She let him do it to her _again_!

He shakes her violently, like she's a rag doll in his hands. " _Shut up_!" he roars. "See? You _see_? Lights or no lights, you _never see it coming_!"

The nonsense words fall around her uselessly. Just noise, just sounds, and she can't hear anything over her own hoarse panting and the voices in her head, mocking and jeering at her... but gradually, as the chaos wanes, she realizes something has changed...

Todd is barely touching her now; his hands are like feathers on her shoulders, his savage energy is gone. She glares at his reflection—he's pale, eyes wide open and empty, like he's in shock. His words land then...

_Lights or no lights, you never see it coming..._

She's calmed down enough to give her reason a voice, despite the still smoldering bonfire. _Lights_? What a bizarre thing to say, completely out of context.

"Todd, what the hell are you talking about?"

He just stares vacantly, and a shock of adrenaline stiffens her, puts her on guard—he's lost in one of his dreams, one of his delusions...

But maybe not...

"Are you jerking me around again?" she snarls at his reflection, and notices that her robe is still open; she pulls it closed and knots the belt with a violent jerk. _Idiota!_ How could she let him do that to her? She really does deserve every name she's ever been called. But worse, once she realized she'd been set up, once he turned violent, she should have _used_ it... why the hell did she fight him?

Pride, that's why. Some things are just too hard to take.

Todd has shown no reaction, hasn't removed his hands from her shoulders, hasn't made a sound; she decides to assume the worst. Though she can barely stand to have him touching her, she stays put and uses the time to regain control of herself, to steady her breathing and tamp down the fires inside... of outrage, of frustrated arousal... and then she waits for him to either bring his delusion into her world or snap out. But he's showing no sign of doing either.

"Todd...," she says, shrugging her shoulders to jostle his hands and move things along. No response. She tries again, more forcefully. "Todd! Never see _what_ coming?"

His eyes shift like a spell has been broken. He blinks, swallows, tongue running behind his upper lip... and gradually he focuses on her reflection. He seems disoriented for a few beats... then his eyes narrow and his grip on her shoulders tightens again. "Don't act innocent, Delgado. I'm not an idiot. It's like a fucking night game at Wrigley Field in here."

She winces at the pain but doesn't struggle. Instead, she watches his face in the mirror for clues to his mental state so she'll know how to respond. He's tense, shuttered, but seems present now... though it wouldn't be the first time he's appeared to exist in two places at once. "Are you here, Todd?" she says warily. "I mean, this isn't another... _thing_ , like seeing Patrick. You're not hallucinating..."

"No, I'm not hallucinating," he spits, but lets go of her and backs away. He looks absently at the lingerie in his hand, stuffs it into his jacket pocket and flexes his fingers.

"You're at the Palace Ho—,"

"—I know where the hell I am, Delgado, cut the crap," he grinds out, slumps and turns away.

She slumps, too, so exhausted, so sick of this shit. She takes a moment to orient herself to yet another of his kaleidoscopic mood swings, smooths down her hair and licks her dry lips. "Todd," she says, resting a protective hand over her throat. "You were standing there, completely unresponsive, for almost two minutes. What happened?"

He glares at her, but it's only a surface glare... underneath he looks deeply haunted.

"Yeah?" he says, working his jaw. "Well... maybe I was fucking with you."

"Maybe. What were we talking about?"

"Nothing. We weren't talking about anything. We were talking about how you get off on using Bible Boy."

She seethes, bites down on her teeth. Fine. She should leave it at that, just let the clock run out, get her divorce and worry about a permanent escape later... maybe hire someone to kill him—that would do it. But he's completely altered now. He's hunched in on himself, withdrawn, harmless and so _lost_ in that heartbreakingly familiar way of his. Despite the hell he's been putting her through, her own worst enemies come roaring to the surface—her compassion, her curiosity, her goddamned _hope._ She considers telling them all to go fuck themselves. _.._

But she squares her shoulders, closes the door on her own agenda... and wades into the fray for what will be, what _has_ to be, the very last time.

"Todd, you said something about lights."

"Forget it," he grumbles.

She won't, of course, forget it. She crosses her arms and quickly reviews the afternoon for anything at all that might be relevant... and a memory crystallizes.

"Lights or no lights, Wrigley Field... yes, yes, you said something like that before... when I asked why you threw that water bottle, you said it was _bright_ in here."

"I threw that bottle because the water tasted like piss," he snaps instantly, like he'd been expecting it to come up. "Now shut up about it."

"No, Todd, I won't _shut up_ ," she says, gaining steam. "I won't let this go; it's when everything changed. I heard you in the bathroom... laughing." And suddenly she laughs, too, with wonder and delight, surprising herself with a burst of emotions her own defenses hadn't allowed her at the time. "Todd, you were laughing... genuinely _laughing_! You! And then—,"

"—You're nuts, Delgado. You're making shit up," he grumbles, low with warning.

"No, I'm not. I know what I heard. You were happy about what happened between us on that bed."

And just as suddenly, the full, crushing weight of loss hits her—the loss of time, of tenderness, of potential—and tears well in her eyes. "Oh, my God, you were _happy_. I thought..."

She trails off, unwilling to relive what she'd thought. His back is to her, a solid, mute wall of denial, but she's determined to scale it. "Why can't you admit it? What's so shameful about being _happy_?" she says, letting the tears fall. "And then something happened, something upset you... the lights upset you?"

"Just stop, Delgado, okay? Stop." He lurches toward the door, halts, turns back, seems at an utter loss as he drops heavily onto the sofa and lowers his head into his hands, hair swaying, shielding his face.

She watches the turmoil and feels for him... for both of them, amazing herself yet again by how quickly and easily she can forgive, forget, clear the board and start all over at _GO_.

"Please, for once, Todd, _please_ talk to me..."

But he's silent and heavily barricaded against her. She stares at him hard, as though she could will him to let her in like he did before. What she wouldn't give for that... for him to take her hand and open himself again, pull her into that black, wrecked inner landscape of his, even threaten her with annihilation—at least she would know what the hell is going on. But he's changed toward her—his contempt is at a fever pitch—and he'll never let her in there again.

But it's not all his fault. She takes a deep breath, forces herself to face another hard truth:

When he did open himself and let her in, she rejected him... utterly, brutally.

_I am not your goddamned MOTHER..._

She's swallows down crippling guilt, forces herself to look past all the missteps, lost opportunities, and instead to search for clues. She scans the afternoon like a court transcript... reviews his insane accusations and paranoia, bizarre statements, his vicious, sustained efforts to push her away—

And suddenly his voice rings out like glass shattering in her mind:

_I'm out of control, like you said. I hurt... people. Even when I don't mean to. See? I finally made even YOU afraid of me..._

His efforts to push her away... efforts she'd seen as _rejection_ because that's exactly what she'd been expecting, what she'd been so afraid of that she'd never even considered another possibility...

 _Fear_. It's been all about fear, for both of them—fear of hurting and of being hurt. Fucking _fear..._

She moves toward him, extending her hands, then not. "Oh... oh, no, Todd," she says, heart breaking. "You thought I was afraid of you...? You thought that... you hurt me? And... the lights...?"

She carefully seats herself on the sofa, near him, but not too close, as though he might disintegrate. She realizes he's speaking, so quietly that she has to lean in.

"That's what people do, right?" he's saying into his hands. "When they're afraid."

"What do people do?" she says gently.

His breathing is harsh, labored, like a weight is crushing his chest. "They turn on all the lights."

Téa forces down a sob. She squeezes her eyes tight, clenches her fists so she won't throw her arms around him.

Lights. _They turn on all the lights..._

She looks around the room, at the ceiling light, the wall sconces, the table lamps, all blazing bright, _every single one_...

"Oh, you idiot," she whispers, half choked with grief as the tumblers click into place, half seized by joy because this explains everything. This _changes_ _everything_. "You big, dumb... _pendejo_." She stands up on shaking legs and crosses to the light switch on the wall by the door. "Watch me."

He doesn't. He wraps his arms tight around his body and mutters, "Whatever," like his fate was sealed long ago.

Téa flips the switch. The room goes black.

"Todd... if you'd just said something..." her aching, disembodied voice floats on tears in the darkness. "All the lights are connected to this one switch. It's stupid and inconvenient... but it's just the way the room is wired. It has nothing to do with us. Do you see?"

She starts to flip the switch again, but needs to leave it black for a moment... to seize this opportunity and turn back the clock, realign the stars...

"Todd... I wasn't afraid of you. In fact, I... I—," but she can't go on. It should be easy to say into the darkness... but it's not easy. Fear won't let it to be easy. Fucking _fear_. So instead she says, "You didn't hurt me before, when we... were on that bed, if that's what you thought. In fact, just the opposite." She continues quickly, before even this little bit of courage fails her. "I was happy, too, Todd."

She flips the switch again, and the lights blaze on. She's blinded for a moment by the sudden bright, and in that moment she has the luxury of hope. When her eyes adjust, she'll see him smiling sheepishly at her, reaching for her, as relieved as she is that this was all a stupid misunderstanding, ready to start over...

But instead she finds that he hasn't moved; he's still slumped over, eyes fixed on the floor. She blinks uselessly against the tears that are streaming down her face, against the stubborn, heartbreaking need of his to be his own worst enemy. _Their_ own worst enemy. He's right—it's entirely too bright in here.

"Did you hear me, Todd?"

"Just forget it," he mumbles.

She sits down next to him again and lays a tentative hand on his back like she did a lifetime ago, when he was lost in a dream about Marty and guilt and God-knows what. But he flinches away and propels himself to the other end of the sofa.

"Can't we... can't we share this, Todd," she says, giving him space. "Can't we... I don't know... commiserate over this mistake... this rotten cosmic joke? We've lost so much time already..."

He darts a look at her. She takes it as a kind of permission and reaches for his arm, determined to make contact. He flinches, but lets her hand stay. She touches the soft wool of his jacket, glances at his watch, wonders vaguely how much time is left... not that it matters now. There's no more need for games or agendas... because _everything_ has changed...

"I'm so sorry I missed it," she says, edging toward him. "I knew something was wrong, but I thought you were rejecting me!" she laughs dryly, old grief tightening her chest. "I was so busy hating you and protecting myself... do you hear me?" She tries and fails to catch his eye. He's staring at nothing, seems to be there, yet not, and he's so heavy with misery she's surprised he's still upright. She has a powerful, irrational need to keep talking, to keep him anchored and not let him slip away again...

"This is what I was afraid of, Todd," she says. "Not you... _this_. Everything that's been happening. All the pain and blame, us talking over and around each other, you acting crazy. God, it all makes sense now! I wish you'd said something. I mean... look at us!" she gestures broadly at the tragic-comedy that is them. "But we can fix it now... we can go back to you laughing in that bathroom and start over. It could be so good, Todd. Are you hearing me? Are you all right?"

But he's statue-still, wide-eyed and pale, lost inside himself like he's grappling with an unfathomably painful world. Her heart aches for him, curses a self-loathing so vivid and violent that it could cheat him out of even the smallest bit of happiness. She refuses to let it win—this time it's fucking with her happiness, too. She shifts and drops to her knees in front of him, reaches up to stroke his hair.

"Todd, don't go away again," she says vehemently. "This is good news! We don't have to be afraid... whatever we were believing about ourselves and each other is wrong! Please... say something. Even I'm tired of hearing myself talk," she laughs lightly, but is growing concerned that he's not coming around. She goes back to her memory, scans for something she may have missed—a clue, a remark, a veiled confession...

"Is there more? I mean, that's quite a leap of logic, right?" she says softly, trying to coax him out of hiding. "To assume that I was _afraid_ of you, just because the lights were on?"

She smooths his hair back, tucks it behind his ears and takes a chance. "Why do people turn the lights on, Todd?"

He's silent, so withdrawn she's not even sure he's hearing her. She pulls a deep breath to fortify herself before asking the inevitable question...

"What's waiting in the dark, Todd?"

His head snaps up, eyes clear and wide. "Monsters!" he blurts out. He immediately cringes at the sight of her, clamps his mouth shut and gnaws his lips like he's said too much.

Téa is stunned. The traumatized, ravaged child she saw so deep inside Todd is here, right in front of her, terrified by where he's been. She lays her palms on his cheeks, one on the scar, one on the bruise, and yearns with everything in her...

_Please let me help you..._

"There aren't any monsters here, Todd," she says, caressing his face and hair the way a mother would, to soothe and comfort, hoping he'll feel the love she can't quite openly admit to, hoping he'll accept it, because she needs to ask...

"Are there monsters where you are?"

He gasps and seems to collapse inside. He reaches up roughly, grabs and presses her hands tight to his cheeks, tears welling in his eyes. His mouth opens, closes, jaw working like he's biting down on words that want to come, that he's terrified will come, face shifting and darkening in reaction to visions she can't see. He's yearning toward her... she can feel his urgency, knows that he wants to tell, is so close to telling...

But he eases, fades, and the moment passes like a rainless storm. His wet eyes focus on her face and he lets go of her hands, draws a deep breath and sinks back into the cushions and away from her, the child banished once more. After a beat he stammers, "Okay. Good. That's good, I didn't hurt you. I mean... I thought... you know..."

"No, you didn't hurt me." She smiles sadly, disappointed that his courage failed but overwhelmed by an affection so fierce she has to lean up and reach for him again, whisper her fingertips over his torn flesh, to mend wounds, to send healing deep into the dark and broken places, elated that he's allowing it. She feels so sure and strong, strong enough to fight his monsters—with him, for him—it doesn't matter. She knows she can offer him the love that's overflowing inside her, offer it freely... and survive. The joy of it bubbles up inside her—no, there's no need for schemes, no need to escape now, because the stars have realigned and they can start over with a new understanding... and the beginnings of trust.

 _Everything_ has changed.

She eyes his other cheek, the one with the bruise, and smiles. "Besides," she says, brightly, playfully, letting him see her happiness, hoping he'll share it. "I have a pretty mean right hook. I think I could keep you in line if you tried anything."

His wet, haunted eyes suddenly narrow and go cold. His face hardens under her hand like setting concrete.

"So that's what you think, is it?" he says... and it's as hostile and full of hate as a fist in her face.

She flinches, but won't let herself understand at first, continues stroking his cheek even as her heart sinks, even as she searches those icy eyes for a sign of the child, a sign of need... or that he's joking, playing her again...

But she knows better. From bitter experience, she knows better... she's been here before with him, far too often. She drops her hand, drops her head, grief-stricken, all the love and joy and hope vanishing... because like a shadow when the lights go out, he's gone. And there's nothing left but darkness.

She gathers the shattered, scattered parts of herself, reassembles them with deep, centering breaths, forces her mind to clear... to see that _of course_ , nothing has changed. Nothing at all. The clock can't be turned back or the stars realigned. It will always be like this—the high is an illusion, the crash is inevitable, devastating... and ultimately lethal to everything she is.

Téa pictures the strange, peaceful smile on her mother's face as heavy blows wrack her frail body for the last time. And as the door closes on the image, she surrenders absolutely to the only hard truth that will save her...

The hate has to win.


	8. Chapter 8

_I have a pretty mean right hook. I think I could keep you in line if you tried anything…_

Todd is pitching and rolling in an ocean of hate. Bizarre. It was an innocuous statement, said with obvious affection. Who could have known…

He thinks of the surf as it moves toward high tide, edging up the shore—regular, predictable, darkening more and more of the sand—but there's always that one rogue wave that breaks and crashes violently…

And then he's got her by the throat, hoists her to her feet as he rises from the sofa.

"You could _never_ keep me in line, got that? There isn't a damn thing you could do to stop me."

He feels her swallow under his palm, eyes wide, but she doesn't fight.

"If what…?"

"If I wanted to hurt you."

Something rolls over her face… anticipation… excitement…?

He preferred it before, moments ago, when the hope died and the light faded from her eyes. He always watched for that, in the past, with others, back when he was strong—the moment the light would fade and go out. It was the biggest turn on of all, and he would finish then, shuddering with the power of it…

Power. He has no power now. Not with her. He thought he did, after Andy slunk away, after he humiliated her, when he had her wet and trembling there by the dresser, so turned on and _wanting_ … but she could have stopped him anytime, with a word, a gesture. She didn't, so _he_ did, stopped himself before the black poison rose—he happily held onto his leash for her, because despite the hate, she was elemental as fire in his veins…

But that all changed when she tore the fabric of reality, when she probed and cared and touched him with something that felt so much like genuine love that she turned all his oldest dreams into _memories_ , shocking and vivid and clear in a way they never were before... and he almost crawled into her arms like a helpless toddler and told her that the sour breath smelled like cigars and tasted like single-malt, that the paws had fingers that grabbed and moved and made him feel shameful things, that the fingers had nails that scraped and dug into tender flesh, that the voice said he _had it coming_ as his insides burned and the floorboards squeaked and his organs twisted and started to explode... and because it had become too _real,_ he had to make her stop, had to make the memories turn back into dreams, had to make the monsters and the pathetic little kid go back where they came from…

"See this?" He angles his head until she's looking at his scar. "Touch it." He grabs her hand, makes her fingers stutter over the ragged skin. "That's right. That's the only way to stop me. Are you ready to do _that_?"

He closes his hand on her throat, digs in, seconds from tearing out a bloody chunk and killing her if he decides to. When he sees that she understands, he lets her go.

"Do not _ever_ underestimate me."

He turns his back on her, puts distance between them… a small gesture that restores some equilibrium in the turmoil, helps the rogue wave recede and merge with the other waves, his mind and body alternately rising and falling... but wherever he is, it's so dark—the protective lights are gone and the monsters are loose…

"My my, that was… _extreme_ ," she says. "Touch a nerve there, did I, Todd?"

"Shut up."

His eyes are closed so he opens them… and there it is in front of him, the light switch on the wall…

_We can go back to you laughing in that bathroom and start over. It could be so good, Todd…_

If she weren't here, making small shivery sounds behind him, he'd drive his fist through the thing up to his shoulder because yeah, he'd been _fucking happy,_ for one of the few times in his life...

Completely happy.

But if he'd stayed happy, Andrew never would have shown him what a ruthless, lying bitch she is… how she betrays men and turns them into bloody stains beneath her heel if they let her, if they tell her their dreams and their _secrets_ …

He'd been so close to telling. Too fucking close…

He hasn't been breathing, caught in an undertow, and he gulps air silently so she won't hear, merges with the waves again, lapping, lapping…

Laughing, laughing. An impossible sound…

He wheels around to find her red-faced and shaking, mouth an open wet gash.

"Oh, please, get over yourself, Todd. I'm so _scared_ … like you ever follow through on anything. What are you gonna do, give me another nasty _hickey_? Rub my panties in my face some more?"

He licks his lips, suddenly very dry, saliva burned away by a blast of heat.

She's in his face then, straining up.

"News flash: I'm not afraid of you! How many times did you burst into tears tonight?"

_"What?"_

How many times did you grovel and beg… _please_ _don't go, Téa, please don't leave me, Téa_ …? How can I possibly be _afraid_ of someone like that?"

He jerks back… dives into denial. He didn't do that, he didn't say those things… Bible Boy said those things. He would never… but he _did_ , knows he did—that's when he started hating her. He hears his voice—wheedling, whining, weak—and feels gut shot and ashamed that she would mock him for that, for _needing_ her, the heat inside fading to a dumbfounded ache…

"Aww, does the truth hurt, Todd?" she laughs.

He staggers, her words from the Palace Bar bursting around him like fireworks…

_Does the truth hurt, Todd? The truth is, our marriage was a joke because you were never MAN enough to make it real…_

And the ache turns to acid rage in his throat, rage that curls hands into claws, fuels the wild _hate_.

"You smug _bitch_. You know, you need to be taught a lesson about humiliating men."

She doesn't miss a beat. "According to you, I don't need any lessons—I do that pretty well already."

Jeering, sneering, more deafening explosions from the Palace Bar and he wants to cover his ears but won't in front of her...

_Poor mixed up, IMPOTENT Todd…_

Different words now, same tone…

Laughing.

He's stunned by her about-face, her open mocking… but then he remembers—she saw through his armor like it was glass, thinks all his threats are empty. She doesn't know what happens when he feels defenseless, cornered, hurt…

_Keep pushing, Delgado. I don't know why you're pushing, but keep pushing…_

He smiles to himself like he's holding four aces, floats in his sea of hate, remembers how much she enjoyed showing him the truth about the lights, laughed at his stupidity, tried to make him say things she could use to crush him once and for all…

_Why do people turn the lights on, Todd, What's waiting in the dark, Todd…_

And he almost told her, did tell her enough to make him feel like an exposed nerve, like a babbling idiot…

Bright, so bright in the room now, but he's not afraid of it anymore; it doesn't burn his skin or judge him. The same light shines on her… and there's no place for her to hide, either. So when she comes for him again, he'll be ready. But why wait?

"Pissed because I shot you down... or because I didn't get you off?" he hears himself say, hollow as a crypt. "You're operating under a—what would you lawyers call it—a mistaken assumption."

She raises a brow, cocks her head. "Yes?"

"You actually think I _want_ you."

She hoots a laugh. "Oh, you want me… you're just not man enough to act on it—never were. What kind of _man_ has to be shamed into sex?"

Oh, yes, he's ready.

"The kind of _man_ who can't stand the thought of touching a lying, stinking slut like you."

Her face goes white, then red like she's broken character. He sees the slap coming, but doesn't bother to deflect it. It stings a little… but not as much as his palm when he slaps her right back, because why the fuck shouldn't he after all the times she's hit him…

She gapes at him, his handprint fading on her cheek. Then she laughs a stunned, dry laugh, eyes glittering. "So why'd you do it, Todd, if I'm so disgusting?"

So ready. "It was all those seductive football metaphors you threw at me, Delgado. What guy could resist?"

"No." She doesn't touch her cheek, just lets it glow. "You owe me an answer. If I'm such a _lying, stinking slut_ , why did you have sex with me?"

He's silent. He sees now that it's the most pathetic reason in the world.

"I know!" she crows. "You did it to prove you _could!_ One little swipe at your manhood and your whole world crumbles. Jesus, are you really that insecure?"

She's keyed up, eager for his come-back, but she's nailed him, and he's suddenly so tired. He backs up, backs away from the provocative force of her.

"Shut the fuck up, Delgado." Growled like an animal. It's the best he can manage. For the first time, it occurs to him… he could _leave_. Why is he still here? There's a reason… he blinks at his watch.… 6:38. Right. Sixteen minutes to go. And he's no quitter.

Fourteen minutes ago, when this latest round began, he'd been strong and clear. Fourteen minutes ago he'd sent Andy slinking away down the hall. Fourteen minutes ago Delgado didn't know which way was up.

Good times. Long gone.

Now he's the one who doesn't know which way is up, tossed in the turbulence of memories, confusion, shame... waves cresting and crashing, pinning him to the bottom. He digs his knuckles into his eyes, shooting sparks, lowers his hands. He's disoriented… finds he's somehow standing in front of the dresser again. He looks at her through the fading sparks; she's small in the mirror, far behind him… not tight in front of him like before, when he was using his mouth and hands on her. He drops his head and feels her under his body like flame…

_He likes me in red…_

No! She belongs to _him_ , not to that stiff-collared asshole. They belong together. Once she was too far above him—touching her would have been like keying a Bugatti or shitting on the Mona Lisa. But not now. She's vicious and selfish, just like he is—she's no better than he is and he could have been fucking her all along if only he'd found out sooner. Briggs appears in the mirror, holding his red pen, and Todd tells him, _No, I don't need to keep track or make up games… I'm not celibate anymore… look what I've got, LOOK at her_ …

No, no more need for games. He's got sixteen minutes to make her stop screwing with him, to get her in line. He can do that… he has before, at other times, with other people…

_You're not a man, you're a curse…_

_Fuck you, Marty. Fuck you._

Téa is watching him from far away, face like granite. No, _colder_ , like a glacier… with a small, mocking smile. He needs her closer and he's thirsty. He points in the mirror at the water bottle on the table.

"Gimme that."

He's free of his leash so she should probably stay back, but she lifts a brow, shrugs and then she's next to him, holding out the bottle. He reaches for its reflection and his hand closes on nothing. She laughs, too hard, but there's no sound.

"You're no fucking saint," he says.

She blinks. "Never said I was."

"Never said you weren't." He grabs the real thing from her, uncaps it, takes a swig. "Have some..." And then he's pressing the bottle's mouth between her full, parted lips, lifting up, and she's tilting her head back, closing her eyes as the liquid moves…

"Jesus, you really are a slut," he hisses. "What else has been down that throat of yours…?"

She finishes the sip with dignity, lowers her chin as he pulls the bottle away, twists the cap closed like he's breaking her neck, throws it to the floor.

"Nice big swallow. No surprise."

Glacier… cold and still as a glacier. But it's landing, it's all landing; he knows it by the twitch of her eyelids, by the paleness of her skin. He'd been storing these up since earlier, waiting for the right moment…

A drop of water glistens on her lower lip. He leans in and licks it away. She lets him. He lingers, feels his breath bounce back on his face as he whispers…

"Your dead mama teach you to be a slut?"

She opens her mouth… her breath is sweet on his lips as she replies…

"Your dead daddy teach you to be a pussy?"

Glacier. He's the glacier now, and an icy wind whips over and through him, but the roaring of the wind doesn't drown out the rest of what she says…

"Your daddy teach you to beg like a dog?"

His arm flies out. Her throat is so delicate beneath his palm again, and when he squeezes it's harder for her to talk, but she talks anyway…

"Your daddy teach you to cry like a little girl?"

"Shut the _fuck up_."

And then her robe is open and he's grabbing her breast, kneeing her legs apart, ramming his tongue into her mouth to shut her the _fuck up_ …

She doesn't fight… so he finds his leash, clamps it between his teeth and tears himself away from her. He leans a hand against the wall, closes his eyes to pull a deep breath, deeper until his chest aches, deeper still, holds it, releases it in a blast to expel the poison. Too much ebb and flow, too much back and forth between them, faster and faster until it's created a sucking whirlpool that's pulling him down to a place he won't crawl out of…

"What's the matter, Todd? I know you want to. You were hard before, you wanted to fuck me, but you couldn't, could you? You got lost in one of your little dreams. Poor Todd, so confused…"

" _Back off_."

Maybe he's finally fallen and this is what it's like alone at the bottom of the void—all dark undertow, icy and vast. He wants to feel her swallowing under his hand again, wants to press until he hears a crack and the swallowing stops...

"Don't you know that real men don't get lost in dreams, Todd? Real men know what to do with horny, naked women—they don't have to run away and hide in their own heads. Poor little Todd, do I _scare_ you? Did Daddy know what a coward you are?"

This is new, this place, this feeling. Not well. He knows he's not well, that the poison is spreading—she's spreading it. He bends, rests his hands on his thighs. He needs to get away from her, to sleep before he does something very bad…

She huffs a laugh, smooths down her robe. "What's wrong, Todd… am I getting too close to your little _secrets_?"

He feels his skin melt off and pool at his feet.

He punches out, next to her head, connects with plaster and searing pain. He grabs her lapels, slams her back against the wall. Like rumbling thunder, the monster's voice says,

" _You fucking_ _bitch_."

She's startled but smirking, not the least bit afraid. "You have _no idea_."

She's goading him on purpose, not even trying to hide it. He could demand to know why she wants it, but that might slow the momentum, stop it altogether… and he doesn't want to give her an out anymore. He's itching to do some damage…

He notices wetness on his torn knuckles, turns his hand and smears crimson red onto her white robe like blood on a wedding dress… but he doesn't get pulled away to the penthouse. He's exactly where he needs to be.

He spins her around, pulls her back against him and crosses his arm over her windpipe.

"Of course, this is the position you like, isn't it, Todd?" her voice is tight, breathless. Still fucking _talking_ …

"Don't have to look at that stinking face of yours."

"You can pretend I'm somebody else... like Andrew..."

"The fuck is _that_ supposed to mean—"

"—I think you know."

He grabs her hair, yanks back. "You little piece of shit. Who the hell do you think you're talking to?"

He pivots their bodies and shoves her stumbling into the dresser hips first, rattling the metal drawer pulls, shaking the mirror.

Her face twists around to his, her eyes narrow and hard. "You wanna do this," she hisses. "Let's do this. You came up here for revenge, didn't you? So come on, no more games, no more half measures—teach me your little lesson in humility! I deserve it, don't I, Todd? I'm a liar and a user, I'm a ruthless, heartless, castrating bitch, just like all women—isn't that what Daddy used to say? Show me and Daddy what a _man_ you are!"

He closes his eyes, drops the leash, lets go… lets it come, all of it, lets the poison rise, spread and take him. "Oh, you stupid cunt," he says softly.

"Names, Todd? You can do better than that," she sneers over her shoulder. "Or maybe not… maybe that one lame fuck was all you had in you…"

"You have no idea what I have in me."

He steps back to make space, yanks her robe up and over her hips to reveal her naked ass—creamy, round, perfect. He swings his arm, cracks her hard. She yelps, bucks, freezes as his fingers grab her hips, dig in.

"Say _no_ to me," he says through clenched teeth. "You say _no_ to me."

One last chance…

All he hears is ragged breathing. He snaps to her eyes in the mirror—wide, intense—beyond that he can't tell… doesn't care. Nothing else matters now. He's got her exactly where he wants her—how she's always been, though he only suspected it—

His willing victim.

He looks at the reflection of himself, his true self, loose in the world… monstrous, and vibrating with _power_ …


	9. Chapter 9

_Say no to me, you say no to me…_

But Téa doesn't say _no_. Even as a second blow lands on her naked backside. And a third, a fourth... bright stings from his open palm… the sounds of slapping, his grunts of anger and effort, and her small cries mingle, reverberate off the walls…

The fifth blow falls harder, carelessly placed, the knuckle of his thumb lands like a rock on her tailbone making her cry out in real pain, the pain of possible damage…

_How much damage do you think we can do to each other in thirty minutes, Delgado…_

_Incalculable…_

But it is calculable—the angular momentum of his strikes, the pounds-per-square-inch pressure when they land, the increase in her heart rate and respiration—all are measurable. Less measurable is her grief—because it was shockingly easy to get him to this place. All it took was desperation, a few insightful bull's eyes… and more cruelty than she knew she had in her. She had escorted him with a loving hand to the edge of a cliff, then gave a mighty shove while his back was turned… all in the name of _freedom_.

But he's giving as good as he got… and as the blows land harder and faster she knows she could reach out, pull him back before this goes too far… even though he said there wasn't a thing she could do to stop him if he wanted to hurt her...

There is one thing.

She could say _no_ to him…

But she says other things instead, things that appall her as they erupt from her mouth. Because she needs hate—even if it's aimed at _herself_ for driving him to this. Hate is the catalyst that will break the spell, the acid to dissolve the bond.… but there's a twisted curiosity, too, a desire to finally see this _thing_ he's been protecting her from, if it's as bad as advertised, if she can _take it_...

So bring it, just bring it all, and she'll see how far down rock bottom really is for both of them, see what it takes to kill this addiction once and for all, to spread so much hate they won't be able to stand the sight of each other... or themselves…

_Hate is hate._

So she steels herself and taunts, goads, exploits his fragile mind, mocks his suffering…

Jabs about his father seem to land the hardest, so she goes there again… watches in the mirror as his beautiful face twists with pain... and there are no instruments to gauge the intensity of her regret as he palms her skull, shoves her head down so hard her cheek hits the top of the dresser with a sharp crack.

But it worked.

She knew this would happen, knew she'd inflict a hell of a lot of damage on her way to oblivion. And this is it— _this_ is oblivion, utterly self-imposed. She's annihilating everything good in herself far more effectively than he ever could have…

And she doesn't blame him—how can you blame a creature for being true to its own nature, a creature who's conveyed every kind of warning it can, as loudly and as clearly as it can? Can you blame the poor beast if you ignore the warnings, corner it, attack it and leave it no choice but to defend itself?

She doesn't say _no_ to him, even as he cries/growls at her to shut her _fucking mouth_ and kicks her feet wide, or as he fumbles with his clothes, positions himself and rams his cock inside her with no preamble, only curses and threats… or as he drives deep, scorching her insides, and deeper still like he wants to split her in two…

She doesn't say _no_ to him… instead she _laughs_ , with tears stinging her eyes, laughs that it's come to this, and how inevitable it was that all their fears would be realized, that they'd reduce each other to the worst versions of themselves. They've been headed here from the moment he knocked on that door.

She flings her arms wide to grab the edges of the dresser, to brace against the coming onslaught, and he doesn't let her down. He withdraws and drives in again, and again, and again with inhuman sounds, slamming her hipbones into sharp wood with each vicious thrust, hands crushing her head and hip, the heavy mirror banging, banging the plaster wall…

And she keeps laughing, edging toward hysteria... mocking words spilling out against her will like poison, but not one of them is _no_ …

Finally with a strangled roar he seizes her jaw in iron fingers, forces her mouth open and shoves her thin silk underwear deep, gagging her, putting an end to the words. She grapples with his hands in a sudden panic, but he grabs and twists her arms behind her, drops down and pins them beneath his chest. He clamps his hand over her mouth like a vise.

"Move and I'll rip you apart." Hissed like serpent breath in her ear and he's driving inside again, erratically, at unnatural, painful angles that she can't anticipate, can't brace against, just has to _take_ with muffled, useless cries, eyes squeezing shut on mounting fear…

And she can't say _no_ to him now…

A seismic shift in power and he's the one laughing now, the one spitting poisonous words—ancient, ugly words about her sex, words that slice her, painful as the claws digging into her, because _he's_ saying them—not her father, not boys with downy cheeks or men with archaic views— _he's_ saying them, and they're vicious and deliberate and so intensely personal… about sounds and tastes and smells and the hundred secret things he knows about her now because she got him to _fuck_ her…

_Stop now… please stop now…_

But he's relentless behind her, inside her, around her… and growing wilder as he gets closer, his words devolving into a choked, barely coherent torrent…

" _Jesus you make me sick you're nothing you worthless shit you're garbage you make me so fucking sick you don't deserve my come…_ "

… ramming his ancient hate inside her, ramming savagely and so deeply that she's thinning out, disconnecting until she finally lifts out of her body and crawls away into the hall on her hands and knees to watch through the heavy, slowly closing door, to _witness_ as he howls…

 _"Don't you look at me don't you talk to me I'll teach you I'll show you I'll show you then you'll stop you won't dare you'll never do that again never do that to me again you motherfucker…_ "

And she realizes—because she _knows_ him now—that the lights have gone out and he's surrounded by his monsters, is raging at them from inside a darkness so consuming he may never find his way out…

And she can't be the cause of that, even now. So she forces herself to crawl from the safety of the hallway and come back to him, back into his fury, into her own pain, and she wrests her hand from between their bodies, just enough so she can reach and wrap her fingers around his wrist… not to pull his hand away, not to rake his skin with her fingernails, not even to plead… just a warm, gentle encircling that says:

 _Enough now_. _We've had enough now, both of us…_

A small wail falls from above her, a sucking in of air—a blessed _understanding—_ and he slows, hips stuttering once, twice… then he stops and collapses fully onto her back, crushing her breasts into the hard surface of the dresser. She's dizzy in the sudden calm. His breathing is damp in her hair and she hears it through her shock as oddly musical… full of notes and rests, staccato rising, rising… then a long, low descent into silence.

His hand falls away from her mouth. After a moment she rolls her stiff neck, raises her chin enough to find his eyes in the mirror… only for a split second, a glancing blow, an instant of mutual horror, shared anguish.

He withdraws himself from her body and then he's gone.

She rests there a moment in the cool quiet... then she unwinds her arms from behind her back, wincing at the pain of tiny bee stings in her flesh. She pulls her underthings from her mouth with trembling fingers, balls them loosely in her fist, and lowers her cheek to the wood again, dry tongue licking parched lips, eyes staring…

She hears the shuffle of clothing behind her, a zipper, the sound of a mass sliding down a wall and landing heavily on the floor. It's her cue to turn and try to mend him… but she's oddly detached, sees herself as though from the outside—bent over, half naked—and pulls at the snow-white robe until the hem drops and covers her. Then she slides down too, crumples to her knees, and farther, through the floor and the floor below that until she's swallowed by the dark, dank earth. There's no thinking here, no words, no mind to think or voice to speak. There's just waiting… for spirit to return, for will to animate her… and there's the heavy door closing on her mother's smile… and a tug inside, like she should be seeing to someone's welfare… but it fades and there's only a profound _nothing_ that goes on and on until she becomes aware of white noise. She feels the room again, and herself in it... an abrupt return that she's not ready for because there he is—her shattered, haunted husband—slumped against the wall, knees up, head in his hands, long, silky hair hiding his face. He's speaking clearly but not making a sound…

_Why did you do that to me, why did you make me go there… I never would have hurt you, I never would have said those things, I never would have done that to you, never ever never ever…_

And yet… he did. With more gusto, stamina and sadism than she could have imagined. But, of course… he's done it before, to others. He carries the potential for destruction in him always, like a latent disease, like a dormant parasite…

And it finally dawns on her through her dark fugue that the reason it was so easy to provoke him was because he _wanted_ it…

She closes her eyes, expecting fresh, deep, lancing pain… but she feels nothing. A vast blankness. She presses her bruised cheek into the dresser to drive the truth home— _he wanted to hurt her_. And not out of self-defense or simple revenge... but out of seething _hatred_. He just needed permission to let all the wounds inside him hit the open air, where… in a twisted sort of alchemy… they could transform into brutal violence against her…

He just needed her not to say _no_ …

"That was a lot to keep bottled up, huh Todd?" she hears her voice say, not unkindly, dry and thin as autumn leaves. "You must feel better, getting all that out of your system…"

He doesn't respond, doesn't move… maybe he's lost in a new darkness with new monsters… but it doesn't matter.

She gathers her legs beneath her and pushes painfully to her feet, hisses at the burn inside, at the raw soreness of her backside. She stretches her neck, rubs her wrenched arms... doesn't bother to look at herself in the mirror. She wouldn't recognize the reflection anyway—the woman she once was is gone, blasted away by desperate choices—and whatever made up her inner geography has shifted and collapsed into a darkness all its own. Spirit hasn't returned, may never return, but... whatever. She's more exhausted than she's ever been in her life, and the force animating her now isn't her _will_ , but simple, mindless physics… forward momentum.

 _Moving on_.

Numbly, robotically, she starts to slide open the top dresser drawer, but a thought stops her cold... and it's only when she feels a weak smile tug at her lips that she hazards a glance in the mirror. It's not her mother's smile that's forming—it's not beautiful or peaceful—it's a smile of _surprise_. Because she realizes there's one thing even more effective than hatred at breaking an addiction:

It's apathy.

She looks at Todd reflected in the mirror… the broken, silent heap of him, driven to the floor... by her, and by his own demons. The image should wreck her, drown her in guilt, make her ache to soothe him, heal him, sacrifice herself on the altar of his suffering…

But there's nothing. She searches her heart for mercy or compassion, but all she finds is that vast blankness... the emptiness where she used to be. There's no guilt or blame or hatred, either—not for him, not even for herself.

The truth is, they've inflicted as much damage on each other as they possibly can, and there's nothing left to feel, or do, or care about.

A strange sense of detachment envelopes her like white gauze, lifts her as she floats around the room gathering what she needs to _move on:_ fresh underwear, a silk blouse and jeans—things she's worn many times that now seem foreign to her—a brush with strands of someone else's hair, shoes that feel impossibly heavy…

She moves toward the bathroom then, arms full of a stranger's belongings, and passes Todd's motionless body. She's surprised to hear his voice.

"Am I man enough for you now, Delgado?"

It's a quiet question, bitter, but with just enough sincerity that it should bring her to her knees.

It doesn't. And as she closes the door between them, all she feels is nothing.


	10. Chapter 10

The gold band on the nightstand... Téa's wedding ring...

Todd is lying on his side, naked in Téa's bed at The Palace Hotel, hands clasped in prayer position beneath his cheek. He watches her ring shimmer and breathe in the silver moonlight. It's blindingly bright, lit from within, infused with life force—her life force.

#

_She came out of the bathroom, freshly showered, dressed, surrounded by scent, and laid the ring on the nightstand with a light click. He hadn't moved from the floor, still sat slumped against the wall, legs splayed out in front of him, hands limp in his lap, slipping in and out of dreams—too shocked and raw to face himself…_

_"This is good, Todd,_ " _she said quietly, towering over him, so tall and bright that he couldn't look at her. "We won't be able to hurt each other anymore..."_

_"We still have two minutes," he growled, as if he had any right to speak, let alone joke. As if anything mattered. But it was true... one minute and forty-seven seconds to be precise, and they had a deal... and it was the last little bit of time he'd ever get to spend with her as his wife... his last little bit of control..._

_She hesitated for only a moment, then got down on the floor next to him, winced, shifted until she found a comfortable position, then leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. His mind screamed horror and regret, screamed at her to get away, but the worst had been done... so they sat together not speaking, not touching, side by side yet each utterly alone_ , _just letting the clock run out on this vicious, twisted game of theirs..._

_Too soon, she lifted his wrist in cool fingers, looked at his watch and quietly counted down the final seconds..._

_"Five... four... t_ _hree... two..."_

_When it was over, she returned his hand gently to his lap and rose to her feet._

_"You won't fight me anymore."_

_He shook his head._

_She trailed her fingers_ _lightly, cruelly, over his hair._ _"Get some sleep now," she whispered, faint as a fading echo._

_And then she was gone._

#

He reaches through the darkness toward the glow of her ring, thinking that maybe he can sleep if he holds it, but he snatches his hand back—of course, he can't touch it. It's still hers, it's still part of her and she's still here with him, as long as he doesn't touch it, foul it, pollute it. So he settles back and watches it, listens for its voice in case it wants to speak to him, to tell him something that might save him now.

#

_He needed a shower after she left, to scrub away the sin and skin and evidence of what he'd done, but as he soaped himself he felt her again, the tight, slick glove of her pulsing around him, imagined the water flowing over her naked body as it was flowing over his, and he brought himself off with hard, punishing strokes, shuddering at her pained cries ringing in his ears, hating himself, wanting to die as he watched streaks of white disappearing down the drain…_

_When he stepped from the tub he saw her bathrobe on the hook. It was smeared with his blood. As he pressed it to his face and breathed in her scent, he was caught by more red... blood red lingerie, twisted, ruined, shoved deep into the waste basket at his feet like he'd shoved it deep into her mouth..._

_He lunged for the toilet and puked until he was empty._

_#_

The sheets are soft and warm around him, cocooning him. He likes to think that it's her body heat he's feeling, that he can detect her scent on the fresh pillowcase, and as he watches her wedding ring, listens for its voice, it grows and expands, thicker and larger until it fills his field of vision, blindingly bright and so huge and heavy that the nightstand starts to shudder under the weight of it. It must have been so hard for her to carry, such a burden…

#

 _He swigged her mouthwash, left his clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor, stumbled naked to the front door to make sure the deadbolt was unlocked in case she came back. But she's not coming back. So he stood there, cold water dripping from his hair, rolling down his bare chest, and he glared at the light switch by the door like an enemy. He punched it with his torn knuckles_... _off then on, off then on, faster and faster, strobing the room... remembering pure happiness and laughing bitterly… laughing at himself until the laughter turned to cursing, turned to raging at the wiring in his own psyche that makes him evil and warped and so consistently, so catastrophically wrong about everything that's ever been precious to him…_

_There are no monsters here… are there monsters where you are…?_

_Love. She'd offered him love—bravely, whole-heartedly—asking only that he accept it, not even return it, just accept. But he couldn't trust, needed his fictions and defenses more than he needed her... and he spat it back into her face once too often, leaving her no choice but to provoke him to violence. He drove her to it, he knows that, understood even as it was happening, encouraged it,_ _wanted it, grabbed it gleefully with both hands—the chance to inflict real damage on her. He got what he came for, after all..._

_Yeah, there are monsters here. Nothing BUT monsters here…_

#

When he finally sleeps, the dream-memories come for him. Or more accurately, he goes to them, to the old ones and the worst one of all… floorboards squeaking squeaking and snow melting under his cheek, body tearing, spirit breaking and letting in _hate_ like black poison. He tries to fight his father this time, for the first time, and he swings, kicks, does everything he can to scare the old motherfucker away... but it happens anyway, just as it always does, and it doesn't matter that he cries out until his throat is raw… he might as well embrace this dream as truth, along with the others—they're all he'll ever have. Any hope of a new dream, a dream without blood… well, that died along with the light in Téa's eyes...

And he's so weak, so tired of fighting. He wants to surrender, disappear, sink away into darkness like he sank into the cold Irish Sea not so long ago, body shattered and pierced by bullets in a pathetic attempt at redemption. He survived somehow, but didn't really; he's never quite healed, is still broken in every way that counts… is still monstrous and unforgiven…

_Marty…_

He rides the rough current to that dream-memory, too, and rams his cock into Marty... then rams his cock into Téa, alternating between the two in a hellish three-way, raging, spilling his hate into them, watching and laughing as their spirits seep from their broken bodies until there's nothing left.

 _Delgado_ … she's at the penthouse, kneeling over his own broken body… but he's standing in front of her too, watching as she fights to staunch the flow of his life's blood, but it's too late, much too late. _Delgado_ , he calls to her, needs to tell her that it's no use, and she looks up with fierce eyes, _Marty's eyes_ , so many eyes and voices and accusing fingers pointing and slicing into his heart—

_Don't say my name… don't you dare say my name…_

He's silent in the fire of so much devastation, flings his arms wide to welcome it and absorb it like a scourging, knowing it's so much less than he deserves.

Flashes of light blind him, make him turn away. It's too bright in the penthouse, painfully bright, like the bright white of Marty's wedding dress where it isn't crimson wet, like Téa's robe, stained with his own blood, and the carpet where Blair rolls with Patrick is bright white, too… and there's Starr among them all, arranging Guy Armitage's blown body parts like a mangled puzzle…

 _No, Starr,_ _put that down,_ he cries with sick horror. _That wasn't supposed to touch you!_

But she looks up at him, smiling and cooing, so much love in her eyes, her small hands as bloody as his are. Marty's voice says:

_You're not a man, you're a curse…_

But it comes out of Starr's tiny lips. He sweeps her up and clutches her to his chest, presses a hand over her mouth to silence her like he silenced the others until all he hears is the roar of ocean as they sink together to the bottom of the cold dark Irish Sea… so deep that even his mind falls silent…

And he floats, drifts like he did back then, clouds of crimson blood floating around his bullet-torn body. He tastes death, is grateful for the end but can't quite let go, isn't quite finished. There, in his arms... there's a small weight, a softness beneath his squeezing fingers. He pulls his hand away to see, but he can't see through the bloody blackness. He lifts the weight closer to his face... until he's looking into the open, lifeless eyes of his daughter…

He wails, recoils, loses his grip and the rough current drags her away from him, too fast for his flailing arms to reach her, and he can only watch helplessly as her tiny body disappears above him in the dark…

The grief shreds him, rips his limbs from his torso, grinds his organs to pulp. His anguished cries fill the sea, creating waves that carry him up to a place of warmth where hands are on his shoulders…

His throat is torn and raw, but he forces out words through sobs that wrack his chest…

" _Please, please, help me... I don't want this anymore…_ "

He reaches grasping hands and finds softness in the cold dark sea. It struggles wildly but he pulls it close to him, holds on tightly, rolls it beneath him to prevent the turbulence from tearing it away like it tore Starr away. He's quaking with seismic shifts and howls erupting from deep inside, and there's no chance of silence now—he's in an echo chamber filled with screams of hate and rage and words he spat like acid, burning away so much tender flesh…

And he knows that trying to hold this dream, this softness beneath him, is like trying to hold the breeze, or to hold snow on your tongue. It will melt away, disappear, is gone even now... but he has to try to hold it, has no choice. The alternative is worse than death.

" _Please, please_ ," he groans into silky hair, into a tight, protesting mouth, as though that word repeated often enough will erase, correct, heal… but he has nothing else, and though it's too small a sound to be heard in the roar of his echo chamber, he can't stop himself.

" _Please_ ," he whispers against a raw, ill-used throat, against the gentle curve of breasts, against a thrumming heartbeat, until _please_ becomes, _I'm sorry, God, I'm so fucking sorry, forgive me, you have to forgive me…_

Desperate sounds, breathless and thick with Spanish curses, sounds of fury and outrage rise up from beneath him… and pain stings his flesh as teeth bite, nails rake… and the old dream flares of Marty…

 _Marty beneath him_ …

_I'm so sorry, forgive me, you have to forgive me…_

Over and over the words echo inside and out… and gradually sounds of outrage give way to anguish, and arms encircle him, hold him, nestle him with hushes and nonsense syllables until calm washes over him... and he can settle into this place, drop his mouth into the silken flesh and whisper so no one else can hear as the blackness pulls him down…

" _I'm so lost…"_

#

He slowly rises from mercifully quiet darkness, emerges into silver-blue light and scent and endless, enveloping softness that he needs to touch, wrap himself around before it's pulled away by the current... but gentle hands and sweet sounds stop him...

_Shh, shh, todo está bien, cierra los ojos... duérmete, cariño, duérmete..._

The sounds swaddle him as they melt into music, and the gentle hands caress his face, his hair...

_Arrorró mi niño... arrorró mi amor... arrorró pedazo de mi corazón... este niño lindo..._

... And he sighs, drifts on the gift of tenderness as it carries him away, lets him disappear into nothing ...

#

When he rises again, it's into heat and turbulence—a storm that's been raging for awhile, judging by his sweat and need—and he wants more skin, is pushing away anything that isn't skin, skin pressing skin. The arms tightening around him are frail but so fierce, making him feel so wrong for wanting more... and he's whispering, _please_ , before he understands that he means _let me disappear again._ He takes a delicate hand in his, and God, he's so wrong to wrap it around his shaft, so wrong to push into the grip, to urge a stroking rhythm that hardens him fully… but then he's caught up, embraced, and sinking, sinking as warm thighs encircle his hips and pull him into exquisite wet pleasure, a slow rocking pleasure that engulfs him... and the sensation is pure, overwhelming, spinning him up and out until he's free and nothing else exists in the world. A new feeling shakes loose inside him, warm and tender, rising from a subterranean place... but something else rises with it—the knot of black poison, the malignancy—and together they ride out into the world on a groan of ecstasy…

He collapses then, into bliss, into the embrace that shuddered at the sound of his orgasm... but he's aware of the expelled poison hovering nearby, waiting for a chance to return. He won't let it. The lips on his mouth, the hands on his body are keeping him in this new dream, shielding him from anything that might hurt him, holding him inside impossible heat and pressure, holding him together—his broken flesh, broken heart, broken spirit. But not just any heat and lips and hands— _hers._ He can't look at her, can't accept that even his dream-mind would bring her here to suffer at _his_ hands again... to be taken, used, abused, ground into dust over and over and over...

_I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry…_

"Todd," she whispers, husky, pleasure-soaked. "It's good, Todd…"

 _Téa_ …

He says her name silently, then not. He feels cleaner now, soaring on her words of approval, held aloft before he drops his head into his new forever home at the curve of her throat and lets her wash over him, through him as he moves carefully inside her and tastes her soft, rhythmic moans. But he can't let her in any further or the poison will get back in, too, and make him hurt her again, or the current will drag her away... or maybe something worse that he can't even conceive of—something even worse than what he's already done...

He stiffens, wills instinct to kick in and use his body like it did the first time, so he can make her happy but stay apart and not get attached irrational insane... but she's pulsing tight around him, tangling him in sighs and sweat-slick skin, breathing his name, and he's growing feverish again, buried in that sweet grip of hers… spiraling high, too high on the feel of her, on the sounds she's making. But just beneath her sighs and whispers are broken, ancient cries threatening to pull him into bloody dream-memories... and he sees wet, terrified eyes gaping up at him, hears voices—so many voices begging crying shocked and torn—and he has to silence her with red silk, can't bear to silence her in case he crushes her to lifelessness beneath his fingers and she's swept up into black like Starr…

… But the voices are like battering rams against the thin shell of his mind…

 _Stop it stop oh god please stop... yeah bitch slut cunt you like it rough_... _you're not a man_ _never man enough_... _you make me sick you're nothing worthless shit trash garbage_ _.._. _no Daddy_ _please it hurts I don't want to …_

Gulping air, he rears up onto his knees, grabs her hips, pulls and angles her up to meet him, forcing her thighs wide apart to get deeper, deep enough to hide, to drive away the voices, to disappear. He breathes in her warm, earthy scent, fills his lungs with it, plunges, plunges, her legs bending and shaking in his hands. But the voices are everywhere, hot and sour in his face, and he can't get away…

_You take this you little shit, take it like a man... you made me do this boy, you begged for it, you're nothing but a dirty stinking little whore…_

_Jesus, no._ _Deeper._ He has to get deeper to vanish from his memories and stop destroying with black poison rage violence exploding in bloody shards that stain the white... so desperate it doesn't even matter that she's flinching and hissing his name…

_Am I man enough for you now Delgado…_

The sound of flesh pounding wet flesh is shot through with tiny pained grunts, and he could go on and on until he finds a place to hide, feeling no pleasure because she was supposed to save him and he destroyed her instead and she's so fucking weak to be back here and so fucking stupid, and droplets of water are splashing his chest... her hands are squeezing his wrists... and that's what makes him open his eyes...

And he freezes then, caught by the vision of moonlight shining through the curtains and falling like silver lace across her naked, golden skin…

His chest is wet with his own tears... his tiny pained grunts echo in his ears. But it's so quiet now. His desperation fades away as she releases his wrists. He sees fingers slide onto her stomach beneath him... long, tapered fingers, moving slowly, barely touching her skin, tracing the intricate filigree pattern of silver and gold as it shifts with the trembling of her flesh. He watches, mesmerized by the hands that can love this woman so tenderly.

His hands.

He moves his eyes up her body, over skin shimmering with sweat, nipples dark and drawn, pulse throbbing in the hollow of her throat. He locks onto the dark spots nearby, the bruises defacing the perfect skin—the selfish, cruel vandalism of them. He stops there, lingers on the damage. He doesn't deserve to meet her eyes.

So many injuries… and so many he can't see. His hands move again, hold her still as he withdraws from the tight pleasure of her body. He gently turns her pelvis to see the deep bruises on her hips, the crescent nail marks, the dark welts on her bottom. He touches them, bends to kiss them one by one, his long hair trailing over her flesh, mouth inhaling her shivers. He lets her go, shifts his body and slides down, settles himself between her thighs and breathes in her scent as he slowly, gently explores the sweet, wet, overheated contours of her with his fingertips—a futile attempt at healing terrible injury... worthless, necessary amends.

She cries out at the first soft touch of his tongue, her thighs convulsing around his cheeks.

" _Shh,_ " he whispers, lips moving on her, " _Hush._ "

She relaxes, legs falling open, and she laughs—a breathless, shaky sound that makes his skin ripple. Her fingers sweep through his hair then disappear, and she sighs…

Téa sighing. A thought appears in his mind, of clouds, the sound they must make as they slip through the sky. She's doing that to him, always has—she brings him thoughts he would never think, makes him do things he would never do, drives him above and beyond... and so, so low...

But now—like an undeserved gift, like a miracle—she's killing the monster and saving the man... just like he always knew she would.

He recalls his hands, how they touched her skin, and he lets his mouth do the same. He takes his time and tastes her, savors her, teases her with lips and tongue and slow, focused pressure, whisper-soft flutters... following her subtle cues, drifting on the clouds of her sighs and pleasure... yet deeply, powerfully aroused. Soon a new sound comes—her breath caught high, a rhythmic keening and strange, musical words—and then she's clutching his head with both hands, bearing down and bucking against his mouth with a naked, joyful violence that reaches inside him, asks him to respond, to abandon himself and go where he's so afraid to go—past the bleak, mute terror where the monsters live, and higher, toward the surface where awareness hurts so much, where things are too sharp and bright and out of control. But she's got him anchored now, by her silvery laughter, by her heat on his tongue, her silken thighs cradling his face... and her fingers are moving to intertwine like tree roots with his own, fixing him to this spot, this moment, leaving him with no desire whatsoever to disappear…

And she's drawing him up and over her body again with small whimpers, wrapping her legs around his hips, and he presses inside her slowly, welcomed by throbs and pulses that make him groan and slip his arms beneath her in the silver-blue moonlight and gather her close. His mouth sinks into her mouth and his body sinks into her body with languid movements because there's no rush… it's just another dream… not bloody yet, but give him time…

Because the black poison is still there, hovering so close he can smell it. He's left himself open, with too many ways for it to get back in. He needs to separate from this tenderness that's washing over him like a gentle wave, this… _peace_ …

Somehow. Eventually.

But not now, not yet…

He stops entirely... a pause to rest, to smooth sweat-tangled hair from her brow, to finally allow himself to see her eyes... to risk exposure, risk _feeling._ A quiet moment to store away and recollect when he wakes up from this sweet dream and she's gone, inevitably gone, forever. But he doesn't expect to see what he sees in the open heat of her face, fierce eyes fixed on his—that this is much too real, that _she is his_ , and he knows in his gut the truth of it—that she _wants_ to be, has chosen him, despite madness and brutality…

He's overwhelmed by shock, terror, by a savage _inadequacy_ … and because he _can't_ feel this, _won't_ feel this, he ducks his head… and just fucks her, hard and fast, lets himself go, lets the searing orgasm come. He shudders as it lifts him high and drops him hard, but he bites back any sound.

He doesn't look at her as he rolls silently away.


	11. Chapter 11

The surf rolls what's left of Todd onto the beach, each wave pushing him higher and higher onto firmer, drier land. He stares up at the night sky as the tide recedes; more stars than he's ever seen before shower him with silver. He's been in a bad place, trapped in a violent undertow he couldn't escape... and it tore him apart. But he's free now. He's beyond the reach of the sea and it's okay to sleep…

###

Téa stands by the window, watching but not seeing the lights of Llanview twinkle under a setting moon. Todd's breathing from the bed is soft and steady now; the worst of the nightmares seem to be over. She lets out a long-held breath of her own and looks down at the lace curtain, weightless between her fingers. White thread, intricately woven around emptiness. Light and dark. Bliss and misery. Tenderness and brutality. Love and hate. Each defined by and inseparable from the other.

She hadn't intended to come back to this room. She'd crawled inside her apathy, pulled it around herself like a protective shell, and that's where she'd intended to stay. She'd gotten another room—as far from this one as the small hotel allowed—and when she'd entered and reflexively flipped the light switch on the wall and all the lights blazed on, she'd quickly flipped it off again. And even though she felt nothing, she left it dark. It was okay to do that; she didn't stumble much as the night wore on. She had the moon to light her way, she had the TV splashing garish and blue over her untouched room service tray and over the sofa, the dresser and the four-poster bed, all so similar to the ones in the room she'd left, the room where Todd remained… but she felt nothing. She had to remind herself to breathe a few times, was startled once or twice by the twinges of pain in her body and the small mewls that escaped her throat. She chalked up to habit the fact that her left thumb kept feeling for her absent wedding ring. And when she noticed that tears were slipping from her unseeing eyes and wouldn't stop, she decided that it was just exhaustion. So she got undressed and crawled into bed. She would have stayed there—for days, for weeks—feeling nothing. But the phone rang just after midnight; it was the front desk and there were complaints, you see, about all the shouting coming from her former room and could she please see to it at once…

A flare of rage had blindsided her, but it faded like a doused ember. Of course she wouldn't go back. _Not my problem_ , she thought as she crawled from the bed and reached for the complimentary snow-white robe hanging on the hook inside the bathroom door.

 _Let them kill each other_ , she thought as she slid her feet into the complimentary slippers, and fished the room key from her purse. Todd and Andrew were obviously tussling over her again like dogs with a chew toy... but she moved quickly, knowing whose teeth were sharper...

 _Twice in one lifetime..._ she thought absently as she climbed the two flights of stairs (best to avoid the elevator, dressed as scantily as she was) and started down the too-familiar hallway. _He managed to drive me out into the world in nothing but a robe, twice in one lifetime..._

That's when she heard Todd—only Todd—and howls that curdled her blood. She rushed to the door and let herself in. She flipped on the light switch… and in the sudden bright she saw him, a wild beast surging to his knees on the bed, the sheets twisted around his sweat-soaked body, hair wild and matted, mouth an open gash, eyes right out of horror movie. Aghast, she slammed the switch off again and swayed on her feet, mouth like wadded cotton, trying to banish the picture from her mind.

After a few more moments of thrashing and wailing in the dark, he seemed to settle. When she could make out the lump of him, motionless under the covers, she pulled a deep breath, let it out slowly, turned to leave... and doubled over, crushed under a sudden tidal wave of pain. Whimpering, she stumbled to the sofa and leaned against it for support. She'd been numb, feeling nothing… and now there was nothing she wasn't feeling.

And it was happening to her all over again—her mouth ached as he gagged her with her own underwear, her skin erupted in cold sweat as his hands dug into her hips and head like iron claws, his cock was like a battering ram, brutally fucking her against the dresser, and she was gripped by outrage, fear, paralysis... and his words, words hammering into her brain, words that made her shrink with humiliation then and now:

_You think I liked that before? You think I liked having you crawl all over me like a swarm of fucking cockroaches? Jesus what a stench…_

And so much more... but the rough sound of Todd's harsh, erratic breathing brought her back, pulled her attention away from the ugliness inside and toward the bed. She could smother him with a pillow. _Die, motherfucker._ No one would know. No one would blame her if they found out…

But he started screaming Starr's name, with a raw anguish that shredded her heart. Sounds erupted from the room next door—garbled threats and vicious pounding on the wall above of the bed, and she called to Todd, groped in the dim light for something to throw, to rouse him and shut him up, found nothing, and finally she stumbled to the bed and shoved at his shoulders.

When he grabbed her and rolled on top of her, she was convinced she was going to die, that the rage had finally devoured him and he was about to kill her with his bare hands. She fought him with everything she had, but it was useless… laughable. His strength and his will were absolute and she knew she was a goner… until she realized he was crying. Begging for forgiveness. Completely broken...

_I'm so lost…_

And it wasn't long before she broke, too.

###

Todd slowly opens his eyes on the vision of Téa standing in the window like silver mist.

He feels threadbare, skeletal... like he lost a great battle and was left to rot, but his corpse was cruelly reanimated. The breaths he takes don't nourish him at all—they just float out through his ribcage and into the open air.

He's done such terrible things...

_But she's still here. Still mine._

He glimpses something shining between them... her wedding ring, lying on the nightstand like an accusation. No, she's not here... can't be here. He knows he's dreaming.

And in this dream she's naked, exquisite... breasts and hips kissed by moon glow. He moves his tongue in his mouth and tastes her, feels her body rise like a slow wave beneath his. The light through the lace curtains casts a filigree pattern on her smooth golden skin; he remembers touching that silver and gold, precious and trembling under his fingertips.

 _You're a work of art,_ he wants to tell her, but hot urgency quickly flattens the tenderness, and something deeper growls, _God I want you… get over here, lie down, spread your legs for me…_

But as she turns toward him, his heart explodes all over again and he closes his eyes before she can see how hungry and wet they are in the darkness.

_Not mine. Never mine..._

Maybe if he were brave enough to face himself... to stand naked with her in the moonlight and let her see the dark desire and scars and shame. But he's not. Not even in dreams.

###

Téa watches Todd a moment longer before turning back to the window, reassured that he's sleeping. She thought she'd heard one of his sounds of distress and expected to see him thrashing in the bed as he has so many times in the past hours. She was ready to say his name quietly but sharply; it's the only thing she's found that short-circuits the nightmares and lets him settle back into his troubled sleep. Until the next one comes...

But he's resting now.

And thankfully there's been no replay of the first time, hours ago... after they'd been together, after she'd been loved by him with an aching tenderness that shocked her, and the moments of deep connection before the fear came and swallowed him whole, made him shut down and turn away from her like he always does, always will. After all that, she'd needed to leave and sort through the tornado of emotions on her own... but when she'd touched him to say goodbye, he'd risen up like an apparition, his eyes terrified, unfocused, and he'd gasped:

_Why… why won't you just leave me alone…?_

It had stung like a slap and she'd started to protest… but had quickly recognized the familiar _absence._ And as he'd sunk back onto the bed and into sleep, she knew she had just seen the ravaged child in an active confrontation with his monster—a monster poised to do unspeakable things to him in the dark.

And she'd finally understood. And she knew then that taunting him about his father had been the most vicious thing she could ever have done to him.

So she'd stayed to shepherd him through the night… and it was good to do that, and right… and final. And now, once she's sure he's sleeping quietly, she'll leave... before he wakes, before either of them can commit more atrocities. She'll carry with her wounds she knows will never heal. But for now she watches over him, a sentinel in the silver moonlight, keeping the monster at bay.

###

Todd is floating in strangely peaceful dreams when a voice slips inside, and hands caress his face like the warmest breeze...

_No one will hurt you now... You're more deeply loved than you'll ever know… Goodbye, mi amor..._

His dreams turn suddenly black at the words. They answer with blood and screams... and before they can erupt into the silence of the room and do damage, he pushes the sheet away from his body, leaving himself naked, vulnerable and chilled as raw meat, and he says:

"Punish me, Téa… do whatever you want to me… just don't leave me… _"_

Then he's warm again, swaddled in blankets, and her arms are tight around him. He hears her whisper:

 _Oh, querido, mi corazón… what have we done to you_ …

And she weeps bitterly as she rocks him back to sleep.

###

The moon has set, the sun hasn't risen yet… the world hangs in a limbo of cold steel gray.

Téa has resumed her position by the window. She's so tired and aching, inside and out. The lace curtain she's touching weighs nothing in her hand… the white thread intricately woven around emptiness that symbolizes their relationship…

She can feel Todd behind her again, pounding hate into her body, but this time his tortured voice is crying:

_I'm so lost… punish me… don't leave me…_

She winces at the spreading pain and tells the curtain: "I don't know what to do."

And it answers:

"Positive and negative space. One can't exist without the other… especially in the human heart…"

"That's not really helpful," Téa says.

But the white lace just shrugs in the breeze.

From far below a voice calls, "Thinking of jumping?"

She leans out the window to see who's speaking, but there's only brisk March air. "Wouldn't help," she calls, and leans out farther, so far she loses her balance and pitches headlong through gray. But she doesn't land, just keeps falling, endlessly…

With a jolt, Téa wakes to find softness beneath her. She realizes she's on the bed in her former room at the Palace Hotel, lying naked on top of the covers. Steely light is sifting in through the curtains, and she's chilled to the bone.

She turns her head, sees Todd's form beside her, and her heart is pierced by sadness. She wraps her arms around herself for warmth and lets his breathing wash over her, as soft and regular as ocean waves. She carefully rolls onto her left side so as not to wake him; he's facing her, bundled to the neck in the blanket she'd tucked around him, the bruise she'd given him is a dark stain on his left cheek. She drinks in the breathtaking, tormented beauty of him, laid out before her in this dim light... all the rightness, all the wrongness twisted together, as inseparable from one another as lace and emptiness. He looks more content than she can ever remember... she could spend ten thousand dawns with him, just like this...

She lets herself dissolve then, lets the fierce joy, the tender, consuming ache surge through her again—so pure, vast and overwhelming, so much deeper than anything she's ever felt that she can't help but cover her mouth and weep silently. It's been there all along, laughing at her futile attempts at escape, transcending vicious games and petty insecurities, demanding nothing, threatening nothing... just waiting for her to stop running and acknowledge it. And she finally did, hours earlier as she'd held him, so broken and lost in the silver-blue moonlight. She'd stopped fighting and surrendered completely... and there's nothing left to do now but to simply be in love with him...even though she can't be with him.

It's the ultimate freedom.

She realizes she's shivering. It's not a steady shiver borne of cold, but intermittent… tiny earthquakes in her soul.

Because it's time.

She breathes deeply, dries the last of her tears and prepares herself for the heartbreaking task of leaving him... while he's still sleeping peacefully, before the memory of moonlight fades and there's only horror and pain.

But as she starts to turn away, she sees that it's too late—he's watching her with dark, haunted eyes.

_**To be continued...** _


	12. Chapter 12

"You're here," Todd whispers from the edge of a shallow, demon-haunted sleep. In the dim light Téa's skin is ghostly, and her eyes are wide, mouth tight, body recoiling... she looks appalled. He appalls her.

 _Yet she's still here, still mine_.

He remembers. He saw it in her eyes when he was moving slowly inside her, back when the world was silver-blue.

He lets his own eyes drift closed again and draws an insubstantial breath. He feels her body, frail and breaking under his hands as he slams her into the dresser and keeps slamming...

 _Not mine._ _Never mine._

"No," he gasps. "No, you can't be here."

Téa silently curses herself. The pain in his voice confirms her worst fears; she should have left before he woke up and not given in to sentiment. "I'm not here," she whispers. "You're dreaming."

Todd ponders for a moment, feels his brow crease... a dream. Yes, he'll go with that. A dream... a peaceful limbo where no one hurts... where he can ignore all the sharp, terrible things clamoring for his attention...

And yet...

He recalls her fingers gently carding through his hair, her voice drifting around him.

"You _are_ here," he murmurs. "You sang to me. _Arroz con pollo_ …"

She'd been edging away, but that stops her, makes her smile. "No," she laughs, a soft, fond sound. "That means rice with chicken. _Arrorró…_ "

" _Arrorró…,"_ he repeats, soft as a prayer, trying and failing to roll the r's.

" _Arrorró mi niño…,"_ she sing-songs _._ "Sleep, my child. It's a lullaby my _abuela_ sang to me when I was little."

He snuggles deeper into the covers. Her voice is like honey, sweet and slow, and he's able to drift on it, stay away from the bad places. " _A-bue-la."_ Drowsing, he lets his mouth feel each syllable in turn, doesn't set any of them free until they're fully formed. " _A-bue-la."_

So quiet here... and their low voices remind him of church. He decides that yes, this is where they should stay—together and safe in this timeless sanctuary that denies entry to anything painful... a place where reality doesn't dare exist… where he's not a hideous monster who doesn't deserve to breathe her air... but he veers away from that thought and back to...

" _A-bue-la._ Why did she sing to you?"

His voice startles Téa. He'd been so still she thought he'd fallen asleep again and she'd begun gently feeling for the lump of her robe under the covers. His desperate hands had peeled it from her body in the night, he's been sleeping on it ever since, and she needs to get out of here before the destruction starts again. But it's an interesting question...

"Why...?" she says. "Didn't your mother sing to you...?"

Todd remembers only darkness and silence where his lullabies should have been. Instead of answering he says, "Is it because you were afraid?"

Téa's heart twists as she flashes on his nightmares, on his haunted pleas in the dark... on why she stayed. She chooses her next words carefully. "Well...sometimes I'd have bad dreams, sometimes I couldn't sleep. But mostly...," she hesitates, reaches over and gently tucks a fallen lock of silken hair behind his ear. "She sang to me because she loved me. I think it made her happy."

He leans into her touch like a cat, remembers her fierce arms embracing him, her voice in the night speaking his name when his broken body ached from fighting. And he remembers her eyes in the moonlight, fearlessly telling him things he couldn't bear to know. But he needs to forget all that now...

"I didn't have an _abuela_ ," he says simply.

He feels her hand brush his cheek, linger on his sore bruise. "Everyone should have an _abuela,_ " she says, and her tone is so loving that he opens his eyes. Her own bruise is like vandalism on her perfect cheek; there's a small cut dead center. He hears the crack when he slammed her head down on the dresser…

And then he's there again, behind her, forcing himself inside her as the dam broke and the wild hate burst free in the only way it knew how. It was glorious to be so free. He'd always been careful not to leave marks on the faces of his victims. Bodies were okay… arms, thighs, asses, throats… that could just be construed as rough sex. But cuts and bruises on the face… that was too much like _evidence_. Earlier though, with _her_ , he just hadn't cared...

 _We're twins_ , he thinks perversely, and starts to reach out to touch her bruise the way she's touching his, but he jerks back and banishes the bad, watches it dissipate like a cloud of sighs. He needs to stay in this sacred space for as long as he can. He didn't, he _couldn't_ hurt her here. And she can't hurt him.

Téa is watching his eyes; the way they fade in and out makes her think of a lighthouse, warning ships away from the rocks. Of course, it's much too late for her.

"It's still early, Todd," she says softly. "Why don't you go back to sleep..."

"You'll leave," he says.

She bites back a tiny wail.

"Won't you, Téa?"

She doesn't answer, but he _knows_ , by the way her tear-filled eyes shine in the dim light. He notices only then that she's naked and shivering on top of the covers. He feels more awake now, and more substantial, like muscle and sinew are growing between his skin and bones, fleshing him out... and there's air to breathe, available even to the likes of him...

He leans up on his elbow and reaches over her, grabs a fistful of blanket from her far side and pulls it up and around her, wrapping her up snugly.

"Just like a taco," he says, looking fondly down at her as he tucks the satin hem under her chin.

And just for a moment, the room transforms and the moon is bathing them again in silver-blue, their sweat-covered bodies are intertwined and he's gathering her close, sinking deeply inside her... and it's so good and so real that neither of them can breathe...

It's a gentle kiss they share then, lingering, yearning... could be more, but neither seems to want to take responsibility for it, so it fades, leaving Téa's lips blooming full and red... and Todd can't meet her eyes...

There's no good reason for him to remain poised above her like this, with his hand still holding the edge of the blanket, knuckles lightly touching her chin, but there's no good reason not to.

"You're wrong about your _abuela,"_ he says gruffly. "Love doesn't make people happy,"

She reaches up and touches the ends of his hair. "No. It doesn't."

He tastes her breath, watches a tear slip from the corner of her eye and slide into the soft hair at her temple.

"Have I mentioned that you cry a lot, Delgado?"

She smiles sadly. "Byproduct of feeling a lot, I guess."

He moves his thumb over her lips then, not to silence her, but to feel the puffs of air as she speaks, but it's too late... she's stopped and doesn't continue, just looks up at him with a strange, tranquil resignation.

"Feelings suck, Téa."

"Not feeling is worse, Todd."

He draws a deep breath and lowers himself to his side again. "Wouldn't know," he mutters and stuffs his hands under his cheek. He lets her reach out and pull the covers up around his shoulders, then watches as she snuggles back into her own cocoon. They lie face-to-face on their sides, gazing at each other, expressions open, almost affectionate. They can stay safe in this sacred bubble, can continue to banish reality by sheer force of their combined wills... as long as they both need to.

The first hints of rose-gold dawn have begun spilling over the bed. _Our bed_... the phrase appears like a whisper in Todd's mind, warming him, giving him a pleasant sense of belonging, so he keeps it. _Our bed_...

A poignant realization hits him then, and it doesn't occur to him not to share it with her:

"I can't remember the last time I woke up in bed with another person," he says with genuine sorrow. And it's no sooner out of his mouth then he stiffens, the ancient defenses slamming into place... _so fucking weak_... and he backpedals furiously. "Except Moose," he grumbles. "He snores like a son-of-a-bitch. Must be mimicking _you_ , Delgado."

Her face clouds and he feels her withdraw from him though she hasn't moved. He snaps to his vision of her, standing naked in the moonlight, vulnerable, unashamed. It makes him scowl at his own cowardice.

"I mean… you know," he stammers. "With another human being. Before just now. With you."

She's charmed by both his awkwardness and his courage... and then the same realization hits her. "Me either!" she says, half stunned.

"Huh." Heat rises in his cheeks and he feels almost bashful. "Something in common. Imagine that."

"We have quite a bit in common, Todd."

He hears an edge in her voice and alarm bells ring. Too much bad history, too much blame, too many things that could burst their sacred bubble. He jumps in to derail her.

"Yeah, the hair. We both have nice hair."

Her eyes soften and move slowly over him like a caress. She'd been thinking of their shared fear and stubbornness... but this is true, too. "I'm glad I got to touch your hair," she says wistfully. "I always wanted to."

He feels gut-punched. "That sounds like goodbye."

She takes a few steadying breaths before meeting his hurt, apprehensive eyes. She basks for a moment in the powerful love she feels for him...how cruel it is, how inescapable.

How can she explain walking away...?

"I love you," she says, needing to start somewhere.

Todd winces at the complex knot of emotion tightening his heart. She's never that straightforward... a knock-out blow is coming. Or not. Because he knows it's true. He looks past her, out the window to the lightening sky, the first splashes of pastel pink and blue... full of promise. He thinks of all the times she offered him love and he rejected it... but what if just once he said _yes._..?

"I know you do," he says grimly. "You have to cut that out."

She laughs and snakes a hand out of her cocoon to bat a tear from her cheek. "Believe me, I've tried. I'm done trying. It just _is_ , and there's not a damn thing either of us can do about it. But—," she breaks off to wipe her nose with the back of her hand, and looks around absently.

He understands what she's looking for, shoves up on his elbow and reaches over her to the nightstand, pulls a few tissues from the box, vividly aware of her wedding ring glowering at him in the dawn light.

When he hands her the tissues, she eyes him like she expects him to yank them away. "You're being so attentive, Todd! Where is—," she stops herself, dries her eyes.

"Maybe I'm learning," he says as if she'd finished the thought... as if there's still a chance.

"It's a nice change." She blows her nose, and he finds it impossibly endearing. He digs inside and finds the courage he needs to address the elephant in the room...

"So... this _love_ thing you mentioned," he says quietly. "That's why you came back."

She looks up at him... at the pitched battle between hope and fear raging over his face...and retreats into the blankets. She never should have led with that confession. "No, Todd... there were complaints. About noise coming from in here. The front desk called and said I needed to deal with it."

He shakily lowers himself to his side again before collapsing. He hadn't realized how convinced he'd been that she'd come because she wanted to...

"Noise," he mumbles.

"Well... shouting really."

He rolls onto his back and throws an arm over his eyes so he doesn't have to watch the sacred, fragile bubble quiver and grow thin.

"Sorry to fuck up your night with Bible Boy," he spits, surprising even himself with the bitterness.

Téa flinches like she's been hit. And so it begins, all over again, just like she knew it would. Stupid to stay. So stupid. She pushes violently up onto her elbow, wanting to find her robe and drag it out from under him, but she also needs to set him straight.

"Look Todd. The only reason I came here was because I thought you and Andrew were killing each other."

It takes a moment for that to reach him through his familiar, darkly seductive undertow.

"So... so you didn't go to him. You weren't... _with_ him..."

"I've never been _with_ him. I told you that."

He surges upright. "Yeah, well what you _say_ and what you _do_ —," he snarls, but clamps his mouth shut, shakes his head to get free of the undertow, but it's strong, almost too strong to fight... it wants to drag him back where he'd been, back into the comfort of rage and hate and delusions.

Téa is propped up on her elbow, head in hand, chestnut hair cascading over the golden skin of her arm. Her lips are pursed and she's watching him silently, daring him to continue, old hurt vivid in her eyes.

He pulls and releases a deep breath and drops back onto the bed, making sure the sheet is covering him. "Okay. Okay, look. About you and Bible Boy... _Andrew_. I know you... didn't...," he trails off.

"But you preferred to believe that I _lied_ about it, that I'd been willfully deceiving you. You preferred to believe the worst about me, Todd. Why is that?"

He feels at a disadvantage, to be below her like this. Everything in him says to sit up again, get higher, assert, intimidate. But he stays where he is and scans her face. God, he'd hated her so much yesterday. He knows that he'd felt it, the _fact_ of it, but can't remember the feeling itself...and he certainly can't access it now, with her so close and warm and beautiful—even scowling down at him like this, loaded for bear. But he does remember, quite clearly, that he'd wanted to kill her, to feel her neck break under his hand...

... And that she'd goaded him into doing unspeakable things to her... that she'd used _his father_ against him...

The sudden shock of truth blindsides him, floods him with nausea. He tries to banish it before it bursts their sacred bubble, but it requires more effort this time. The sharp, terrible things are so close; he doesn't know what will happen when he lets himself look at them, the damage he might do. Best to stay here, _maintain_...

"I know you've been a good and faithful wife," he says.

"And you've been a... husband."

He focuses on her face above him. "That's the best you got?"

"I'm open to adjectives." She smiles, laughs lightly; it's at his expense, but that's okay. The danger has passed, the bubble is still intact and shimmering around them.

"How about... tolerant?" he offers.

"How about insane?"

"How about... loyal? That one's true."

"How about celibate?"

"Until recently," he says, going for rakish, but it's a misfire. Their smiles fade as they each retreat into their private, conflicted memories.

Téa slides down onto her side again and covers herself where the blanket has fallen away. She's trying to shake off the echo of Todd's hands on her, both the tender and the brutal, when her eye is caught by the lace curtains, the white thread intricately woven around emptiness...positive and negative space. It occurs to her that she and Todd are weaving their own kind of pattern during this fragile cease-fire of theirs. She turns her head to study his profile as he stares at the ceiling; his furrowed brow, his sensuous lips forming words...

She doesn't realize that her continued presence here has given him hope.

"So... you came back because of the noise. But you stayed," he says, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "Because of... the _love_ thing...?"

She smiles to herself. They're so similar—both are bloodhounds when they've caught a scent—but she decides to stay neutral, too, and focus on facts, no sentiment allowed...for both their sakes.

"You were having nightmares, Todd," she says.

In a flash he remembers the rough current, Starr's lifeless eyes, her tiny body disappearing into blackness above him... DEAD, by his hands, because he'd had to silence her, silence ugly truths that should never be silenced, the truth of what he is. Horror drives him bolt upright and he jams his knuckles into his eyes, forcing himself back to the present and the bed and Téa... _Téa, still here_...

"And the front desk told you, what, you needed to babysit me, keep me quiet?" he snarls.

She goes on guard at his tone. "It's more complicated than that, Todd."

"Complicated how?"

"You were... suffering."

"You should want me to suffer," his voice breaks, along with denial, and the safety of their impossible bubble. "After what I _did_ to you."

 _Violation, assault_... she hasn't quite decided what to call it yet.

"But I don't," she says quietly.

" _Why_?" he hisses.

The pain radiating from him is exactly what she'd wanted to avoid. Too much fucking pain all around.

"Please, Todd, stop this. It doesn't mat—"

"— _Why?"_ he all but wails.

She swallows, can't bring herself to repeat the words. "I told you. You already know."

The sharp, terrible things he's been hiding from find him, engulf him like a tidal wave, sweep him up, carry him back to a place of helpless and savage HATE where he's vomiting sick words, her cries of pain are spurring him on, making his cock even harder as he fucks her, and she's letting him... LETTING HIM.

He tries to drag trembling hands through his hair but it's matted from going to bed with it wet. He remembers her fingers carding through it, the way she purred when she'd hit a snag that made him wince, untangling it as she sang to him...

She _sang_ to him...

"You're a fucking masochist," he gasps.

From Téa's point-of-view, it's been like watching a building implode and collapse in on itself. Her hand is extended toward him, his name is on her lips, fully ready to bring him back from the edge of a crisis, if need be. But now she bristles, grits her teeth. This moment was inevitable, but she has no interest in arguing the point.

"You will not speak to me that way, Todd," she says simply, firmly.

He wraps his arms around himself and slowly rocks his shivering body. "Whatever," he mutters. But he can't breathe as Starr vanishes above him in the dark. He killed her. He kills everything and he gets away with it because they LET HIM...

_TODD..._

Téa's voice is quiet but sharp. He drags his focus to her dark hair, her dark eyes, but she's brighter than bright. With a flare of anger he shakes his head—he slept and awoke clear-headed so this confusion should be gone. But the undertow is still there, trying to drag him down and keep him down...

"So, how far away did you get, anyway?" he grumbles to distract himself from its pull.

Téa watches him warily; he seems to be back, but this question is bizarre. "Why?" she says. "Who cares?"

"You made an awesome fucking exit last night. I wanna know how far you got."

"Okay. Well...," she glances at the ceiling, calculating. It seems harmless enough to tell him. "Two floors down, three rooms over."

His eyes fly wide and he barks out a laugh. "You never even left the building?"

She gapes at him a moment, then realizes how ridiculous it sounds.

"Holy shit!" he hoots.

"Todd...," she tries, but there's no possibility of dignity now. She rolls her eyes and bites her lip, tries not to laugh but fails miserably. He's practically cackling, and it's so infectious and welcome, such a _relief_ , that she dissolves right along with him. It takes a few minutes for them to get to the other side of it, for the last little eruptions to subside and all the pent-up tension to find release, but when it does, they both feel... cleansed.

And Todd feels solidly present once again.

"Seriously, Delgado, that was one damn fine exit. You should be proud, wherever you ended up," he says, flopping down on his side to face her. Her eyes are wet, but it's not from misery for a change, not from any suffering he caused her. It's a rare thing, and the sight reminds him all over again, nearly chokes him with remorse.

He darts out a hand so abruptly that she jumps, but he lays it gently on her cheek. "Look…," he says vehemently. "Look… Téa…," his mouth and jaw work hard, but nothing comes out. He bores into her eyes with all his might, trying to bypass the obstacle of imperfect language and place his apology directly into her mind, but she just keeps watching him with a sort of... benign affection. He soon realizes the futility, pulls his hand away and rolls onto his back, gulping air, eyes squeezed shut.

"It's okay, Todd," she says. "I get it. You said it last night."

She could have let him off the hook sooner, but wanted to see if he could—while in full possession of his faculties—actually apologize out loud. No matter that he failed, the intention was pure and sincere.

"Okay," he grunts.

"And I believe you," she adds.

_But do you forgive me..._

He wants to ask it, but can't bring himself to go there, couldn't bear an answer of either _yes_ or _no_ , so he limits himself to saying, "Okay," and fumbles for her hand. He presses her palm to his mouth, then to his chest, holding it fiercely over his thudding heart. She said she loves him. She's still here... that's all the answer he needs.

He'd like to drift again, to just feel her near him, and not think, not remember...but the ambiguity of the situation, the _uncertainty_ unsettles him, nags at him...

_But do you forgive me..._

Finally he says, "Prison is kind of a blessing."

He feels her shift, knows she's looking at him warily .

"Don't worry, Delgado, I'm just free-associating. What I mean is, I understand that prison exists to keep miscreants like me off the street, to kind of herd us together so we can't harm the populace. But…you do your time and you're done. You know you've paid your debt. Made amends. That somebody, somewhere has forgiven you..."

He glances at her just to confirm that she's all dewy-eyed.

"Cut it out, Delgado." He gives her hand a squeeze and says, so timidly, so awkwardly that it makes her want to sob, "I'm just glad you're staying."

He's quiet then...he's said his piece. He doesn't realize that her heart is breaking, that her resolve is foundering. That boundless love she feels for him? In theory, it belongs solely to her, doesn't require him at all, and she can just up and cart it away with her like a piece of furniture and not look back. But in practice, she sees that it's every bit the enemy she always knew it would be. It's winking at her now, saying, _This is good, right? Physical intimacy, sharing, laughter...what more do you want?_ It's urging her to snuggle into this place at his side and stay there, to forget about the painful blows and bruises, the vicious words that reduced her to shit under his heel, and an assault so savage it drove her out of her own body...

 _No,_ she whispers to it. _No_.

 _He's desperately sorry, he'll make it up to you,_ love pleads _._

"No." She leans up and pulls her hand from his chest, but he snatches it back and lifts his head.

"Delgado...?"

 _He did it because you provoked him. It won't happen again,_ love reasons _._

But she knows the truth: He did it to her because he wanted to.

"I'm sorry." She bites down to keep her voice steady. "I'm not staying. You woke up before I could leave. I shouldn't have stayed this long, but—," she hesitates, finds that, yes, she's strong enough to acknowledge the sorry truth. "There was such sweetness between us last night, and for a few moments this morning...and selfishly, I wanted more. But...it's over."

His vision darkens and he reflexively tightens his hold on her hand. "And what about me? You say you love me. You know how good we can be together. But you're leaving me. Again."

"Not _again_ , Todd... _still_. Nothing's changed. God, please don't make this any harder." She tries to pull away, tries not to say what he couldn't bear to hear.

His eyes are still closed, he hasn't stirred, but his grip on her hand has hardened to iron.

"Todd, let go." She pushes up to her knees, tries in earnest to wrench free.

But his only reaction is to turn her hand and twist in such a way that her arm and shoulder have to follow...and he slowly, inexorably forces her face down onto the mattress beside him.

And the pleading, reasoning voice goes silent. For the first time since she surrendered herself to this love, she's afraid.

_**To be continued...** _


	13. Chapter 13

Todd is sitting back on his haunches, holding Téa's hand between his fingers, twisting it at an unnatural angle to her wrist. It's a remarkably easy maneuver, requiring little effort. His so-called father taught it to him long ago. Actually he _demonstrated_ it on him, repeatedly. But Peter Manning wanted to inflict pain and would deepen the twist, keep deepening until Todd was driven to his knees… or lower. By contrast, Todd is doing as little as he needs to do in order to stop the flow of time.

He told Téa it wouldn't hurt if she just stayed still, but she insisted on begging, struggling, cursing and threatening...her fear escalating to rage and finally, eventually, fading to submission. Her once ragged breathing is even and rhythmic now, and Todd is using it to relax himself, to ease his burning frustration. He's wide awake now, more awake than he's been in months, rested, clear, but running on adrenaline and pure instinct. He's profoundly sick and tired of bullshit—of blood dreams and undertows, black poison, malignancies and all the other crap excuses from those surreal nightmares of his. He's sick of himself most of all...of dissecting the world looking for enemies, of that passive broken-and-bleeding routine...

Yet too many things are crowding his mind, all tangled and sore, and he doesn't know what to do with any of them.

Téa's hand is at his eye-level and he notices that her fingernails are painted blood red. He may have noticed that before, but now the fact strikes him, unsettles him. Except for her stiff, upraised arm, she's face-down on the bed, naked, all slender curves and soft flesh. Apparently his penitent kisses in the night didn't do a damn thing—all her bruises have turned purple.

Cheek, throat, ass, hips.

Vandalized, damaged, abused.

He can only speculate about the places that don't show. But he was certainly thorough.

His mind screams in horror at her,

_Why did you let me do this?!_

And even though it's a silent scream, the force of it shakes him to the core. It must make him flinch and inadvertently deepen the twist because Téa whimpers; He eases back, carefully leans over and kisses the exposed golden skin of her hand. Maybe it's an ironic move, maybe not—he isn't sure. He sees a nasty bruise on her wrist that he can't even remember making...but there were so many opportunities.

He tried to make amends for all this last night, bestowing loving touches, a lingering orgasm and weepy, anguished apologies. She fucking-well knows by now how sorry he is. But what good is sorry? It can't erase the trauma of a sadistic monster violating you, contaminating you, annihilating you...

It occurs to him that he could play the victim, as usual. He could bellow and rail at her,

_Why did you MAKE ME do this?!_

But it's a lie. The truth is, she simply gave him permission to do exactly what some part of him must have wanted to do to her all along.

He notices that her twisted hand and arm have gone pale from lack of circulation. He'll have to let time move forward whether he wants it to or not.

"When you leave me," he says quietly, caressing the silky-smooth skin of her inner wrist with this thumb. "You can't ever come back. I can't take any more of this."

Her familiar, bitter laughter sounds like gears grinding.

He untwists her hand and slowly lowers her arm to her side, and himself with it, so he can whisper into her ear something he's been wanting to tell her since he woke up:

"I can still taste you."

###

A few minutes later he's standing by the window wrapped in a blanket, watching the pastel sky disappear behind lumbering gray clouds—fat and low slung—like the ones that would hang for days over Lake Michigan when he was a kid.

"Snow's coming," he murmurs to himself. When he thinks of snow now he thinks of Téa at the penthouse, sliding that red silk robe from her shoulders. He thinks of her breasts in the blue flicker from the TV screen in the moment before he turned away from her. He thinks of the way her head snapped forward under the weight of the heavy coat he threw at her before he slammed the door, exiling her to the blizzard. He'll never be able to think of _just snow_ again.

He hears her behind him, briskly chafing her arm to get the blood going, then a hissed, "Ouch, dammit," as the pins and needles start. She's taking a break from the tongue-lashing she's been giving him since he got off the bed. Her words of hurt, outrage and disbelief had simply washed over him, inspiring nothing but silent agreement. Yes, he is a sick, twisted _hijo de puta_. Yes, casual violence does come as naturally to him as breathing. Yes, he needs to be locked up. Yes, yes and yes. And the best/worst one: _How could I ever have trusted you..._

You couldn't. You can't.

But what he _feels_ is nothing. A grim, flat emptiness. He thinks it might be despair. His mother used that word a lot in her earliest letters to him, the ones where she tried to explain why she abandoned him to the whims of his so-called father. But the word soon vanished from the pages. Like her guilt.

"I have a theory about our situation, Delgado," he says, before she can start in on him again. "Do you want to hear my theory?"

"No."

"My theory is that you wanted me to do something so unforgivable to you that you could make a clean get-away."

He lets it hang in the air so he can admire the brilliant cruelty of it. Then he adds,

"And I'd be so broken by what I'd done that I'd let you."

There's a long silence. "Does that sound about right?" He glances over his shoulder and sees her standing on the far side of the bed in a clean, very wrinkled white bathrobe. Her hands are clutching the belt she seems to have just tied, and she's pale, her eyes brimming with tears...of course.

"Jesus, Delgado, were you really that weak? You couldn't just walk away from me?"

She leans forward, bracing her hands on the mattress. "I was really that _trapped_."

"Trapped. You were trapped. You're a _lawyer_ ," he says, turning back to the window to watch the corpulent clouds. "There are a hundred ways you could have gotten out of this. Hell, you could have waited for the clock to run out on that half-hour dealie of ours and you'd have had your divorce, your millions, your precious freedom."

He slips a hand from under his blanket and touches the lace curtain that seemed to fascinate her earlier. He remembers the pattern it cast on her skin...shimmering silver and gold. She's saying something behind him—it could be a protest or an explanation—but he ignores her.

"You know, I always thought you wanted out so badly because you hated me. But now I'm thinking...I'm thinking maybe it was the opposite. Was it the opposite, Delgado? Something you couldn't handle? Some kind of twisted, obsessive L-O-V-E?"

"You're an _asshole_."

He shifts his eyes to find her reflection in the window pane. She's glaring bloody murder at him, and he can't help but laugh.

"Oh yeah...bullseye!"

When her reflection straightens up and squares its jaw, he knows he's in for it.

"Okay, Todd," she says. "Let's parse this: A woman _loves_ you, yet she provokes you into beating and brutalizing her in order to get away from you, to...to save the last shreds of herself, to _propel_ herself out of the chaos of your decaying orbit. What does that say about you?"

"I think it says more about _you_ , Delgado," he drawls. "Especially since you came back for more."

She charges on without taking the bait. "And what do you do with sincere, freely-offered love, Todd? Do you cherish it? Do you return it in even the smallest way? Or do you reject it, spit on it, treat it with hostility and ridicule and cruelty, and do everything you can to kill it?"

He swallows and gathers the blanket tighter around himself. It's thick, but it's no longer keeping out the chill. He erases her accusations and pain from his mind like the snow clouds are erasing the pastel dawn, and when he watches the last bit of blue sky vanish, he turns to face her.

"So...I _am_ right," he says. "You did need something drastic to get away from me, like pushing a big red Ejector Seat button. Like chewing off your own leg. So getting me to rape you...that was the key to your master plan."

She staggers a bit, but recovers and juts out her chin. "You didn't rape me," she says flatly.

"Really. Why, because you didn't say _no_?"

He's been very conversational up to this point, throwing in just enough malice to keep himself entertained, but now he implodes at the horror of it all, the savage pleasure he took in her helplessness, in _breaking_ her—it's like metal shrapnel slicing into his organs.

"You're _torturing_ me!" he cries, fighting to keep the agony out of his voice, but it's useless. "Why are you here? I look at you and I know what I am—it's all right there! Oh, get out. Fucking _get out!_ "

She deflates, eyes wide, body slack and swaying for a moment, then she takes a few halting steps toward the dresser. He's in motion before he realizes it, and intercepts her in three long, desperate strides, opens his arms and fiercely wraps her in the blanket with him. He holds her as tightly as he had last night, when the rough current threatened to drag her away into blackness. She doesn't respond, but doesn't resist, and they stand there, cocooned together, each the victim of the other, yet utterly unable to let go.

"How could you do that to me?" she cries softly, and her devastated breath, her tears, are like liquid flame scorching his chest. "How could you take it so far..."

Silent words scream in his mind: _How could you let me, how could you make me, how could you want that..._

But he says, in a pain-soaked voice, "Why didn't you say no?"

She's quiet for so long he's sure she's formulating a complex, lawyerly response, so he's surprised when she says simply, "Would it have mattered?"

And that's the question that hunted him through the long night, the question he's been hiding from, though he hadn't known it. He feels the floor drop away, and he clings to her to keep from falling into the cold, black abyss...but it's too late.

"I don't know," he whispers into her hair. "I'll never know."

###

Todd is driving his already torn fist into the wall by the bed, again and again, pounding, howling with inhuman sounds, releasing his anguish in the only way he knows how. She's staying back, not reaching, not touching him. He knows that if she did touch him, he'd stop. It's an epiphany he'd had hours earlier: That she has the power to keep him from disappearing. She used it when he was brutalizing her up against that dresser...the gentle circling of his wrist somehow dragged him out of that black, hideous place. It was her version of _no_ , though it didn't come in time to save either of them...

But now she's at a safe distance behind him and she's letting him go, letting him disappear...but he doesn't disappear. He exhausts himself instead, collapses on the bed and, as if he's fit the last piece into the puzzle and finally sees the whole ugly picture, he wails, "You _can't_ stay with me!"

She's weeping openly, clutching the robe around herself, tears flying from her face as she shakes her head. "No, I can't."

A sound reaches him—pounding on the wall from the room next door, a muffled voice yelling, " _Shut the hell up over there or I'll call the cops_!"

He lifts his head and tries to shout, "Fuck you," but it's barely a rasp. "Tell him _fuck you_ ," he says to Téa.

"Fuck you!" she calls weakly to the wall, then louder. _"Fuck you!"_

She says it again, a quiet _,_ threadbare, "Fuck you." And Todd realizes she's looking at him, talking to him. "Fuck you. _Fuck you._ You said you'd never hurt me..."

He's slumped naked against the headboard. He lost his blanket somewhere and the cold is seeping into his bones...but he makes no move to cover himself. She's so frail. So damaged. So powerful in ways she can't even imagine.

"Fuck you, too," he whispers.

They're silent for a very long time. Todd stares at the carved wooden bedpost nearest him, his body and mind aching. He feels rather than sees Téa seat herself on the foot of the bed. There's a pillow near him and he pulls it into his lap with his bloody hand, staining the white lace sham. He's recalling the taste of blood when Téa finally speaks.

"Is that what it was like with Marty?" she says dully.

He's surprised that it jars him only slightly that she should mention Marty now. In fact, it's appropriate...and she deserves to know. He casts around inside for the truth, and shakes his head. "No," he rasps, mouth like cotton. "No...it was different. It was... _less_. I don't think I hated Marty as much as—"

He breaks off, appalled.

"As much as you hate me." It's a quiet statement of fact, requiring no response, but he wants to respond, explain what can't be explained...and finds that he can't.

A sharp wave of nausea is suddenly passing through him, covering him with sweat. He tries to swallow it down, but something has lodged in his throat and he can't breathe. His vision is darkening and narrowing to a point, like an aperture closing, and he tries to sit up, but his body is trembling and seizing and it gradually curls itself around the pillow into a fetal position...and all he can do is whimper helplessly, lock his fists between his knees and kick out at the invisible thing coming to get him...

_Todd..._

He hears Téa's voice, quiet and sharp, but his muscles are contracting too painfully to speak. He feels the mattress shift and knows instinctively that she's kneeling on the bed beside him, her hair hanging softly, framing her face, eyes intense and concerned, and he clings to the image through blackness as she repeats his name. He senses her hand reaching toward him; she'll touch him now and bring him out of whatever this is. But he can't feel her. No, she's letting him go again, letting him disappear once and for all. Maybe she's hoping for it...

Still, words are pushing through the violence inside him...soothing words, intimate and timeless as a lullaby...

"Hush, _mi cariño..._ hush _..._ "

And because there's only silence where his own lullabies should have been, he gasps,

" _He liked it dark._ "

The words shock him. He expects a lightning blast to incinerate him or the flesh to be torn from his limbs, but nothing happens. He doesn't want to go on and clamps his mouth shut, but there's a boy in a bed and he has to tell, in a voice shaking with tremors like he's driving over cobblestone:

"I had flannel pajamas with race cars even when it was hot and I'd wake up in the dark and could smell him and he'd have his—he'd have his—,"

A savage convulsion forces the air from his lungs, but he has to rush on before he disappears, and he inhales the syllables even as he speaks them: "I couldn't fight I—no—that's a fucking _lie—_ I _didn't_ fight I didn't fight I wasn't man enough to fight w _hy the fuck didn't I FIGHT..."_

He bucks, legs flying out, choking on fury and shame. "I was so fucking _weak_ all I did was turn on the lights and stay awake 'cause I thought I'd be able to tell what he was gonna do by where he was looking but I never could, and he'd just—God, he reeked of— _oh fuck_. Jesus."

He stops for a long time, caught in spasms, fighting down vomit and helplessness and primal terror. As clear as day he sees the ceramic football lamp next to his bed and then he's there, sweating in his flannel pajamas, a sheet clutched in his small fists and pulled up tight around his chin. He's counting the stitches on the football under his breath and his voice is so young and high and scared…and he's plummeting through ice cold space as he hears the footsteps coming…

But Téa is there, radiating a quiet, focused strength beside him and it's giving him air breathe, easing the spasms so he can speak with less pain, less effort, see more vividly...

"Every light is on—in the closet and this goose-neck thing on my desk and this stupid lava lamp—and he goes around and turns them all off because it has to be dark but it gives me time to...get ready and go away."

He hears a click and the world gets dimmer. Another click...dimmer still. He hauls in rough air, blows it out, realizes his fingers are curled around a sheet that isn't there, so he digs his nails into his palms instead. But the boy is counting louder in his head and his voice almost, but not quite, drowns out the clicks and the heavy thick breathing...

"Last is the lamp by my bed and I can't see the stitches anymore, but even in the dark I can see that big flabby white face coming at me and it's just fuckin' glowing. But then it's the moon. I turn it into the moon."

A whisper floats over him, " _Oh,_ _mi amor, mi corazón...,_ " and though it's light as a breeze, it feels like a thousand razors under his skin.

 _"NO! Fuck you!"_ he howls with so much force that his body straightens and goes rigid. " _Fuck you!_ You don't get to comfort me! I _hate_ you! God…I fucking _hate_ you! They were supposed to just be fucked up dreams, but you wouldn't let it go...you had to go _and rip the fucking lid off!"_

His rage explodes like an oil fire, all but searing away her soft, grief-stricken sounds...

_"Oh God, oh God...I didn't know...I'm so sorry...I didn't know..."_

But the lid has indeed been ripped off, and he's choking on noises disgorged from a bottomless black pit inside him. More things want out, crawling and raging, but he has to fight them down...she's right there and he can't risk disappearing and taking it out on her...but he's quaking again and thrashing and throwing his fists, and he can't control any of it.

 _"Go, get out!"_ he howls.

But her quiet, focused strength grows more powerful and resolute, surrounds him, makes him feel like he could let go and it would be okay because he's safe from it here, he's safe from everything here...

And, oddly, the pressure inside seems to ease with that awareness, then dissipate like the passing of a violent storm...and he sags back into the mattress, shocked and hollowed out, bones rattling with each frail breath, all energy spent.

There's movement nearby, and a sheet settles over him, then a blanket, then a bedspread. He's on his side facing the window and he slowly, achingly, draws his knees up. The pillow is still there, so he hugs it to his lap. He senses Téa on the bed behind him, not too close...but not too far away, either.

Tiny movements outside the window draw his attention. Snowflakes. He watches them float and swirl against the overcast sky...and in that way, by focusing on something else, he's able to begin telling Téa what happened after the lights went out. Just facts at first, dry and colorless, in a flat, uninflected tone...but gradually emotions attach themselves to the facts until tears are soaking the pillow under his cheek. So much shame...but unfiltered words come anyway. So much rage...but he can let it burn in his gut without needing to vomit it into the silent room. He tells her about abandonment and betrayal. About his loneliness and the fragile, humiliating needs of his young mind and body. About power and control and what it's like to lose them to sadistic hands in the dark. About the satisfying, restorative pleasure of making the light fade from a trusting girl's eyes...

He confesses terrible crimes—his own and those committed against him—yet Téa absorbs it all with that same quiet strength. He senses no judgement, only a fierce _presence,_ and as he speaks, as the words alter him forever on their way out, he unconsciously inches his body back toward her.

He feels her carefully, tentatively mold herself to him through the layers of robe and bedding—her chest to his back, her legs tucked up under his thighs—giving him plenty of time, he knows, to recoil from her.

"Is this okay?" she whispers.

He can only nod.

Her breath warms his hair, her hand is resting lightly, protectively on his hip. This can't last, and the grief is a heavy weight in his heart. He has absolutely nothing to give her—he's feeble, defective, ruined—and she's so whole and so strong and she has an incredible life ahead of her...that can't include him.

And in the peace that comes with accepting, he allows himself to call to mind—vividly, without resistance—the night he became himself. And as the memories take shape, he tells her everything...about the squeaking floorboards and the snow melting under his cheek, about the crushing weight and the horror and the scorching pain inside…about the night his spirit broke…the night his father raped him.

And it's the only time she reacts to his words. She wraps herself around him ferociously then, holds him together when the act of assigning language to the deeds gives them new life inside him, makes him shatter and wail and strike out viciously into the cool tangle of sheets the way he couldn't then, the way he wouldn't let himself. She holds him so tightly that he thinks he might not die...that it might be possible to know this and feel this and face this in the gray light of a cold, cold day...and survive.

_**To be continued...** _


	14. Chapter 14

The morning noises at the Palace Hotel are mundane. A door closes down the hall, shoes shuffle on carpeting, water runs through pipes, elevator doors open, releasing the chatter of voices, then close again leaving silence. People are getting ready for their day—for job interviews, breakfast meetings, weddings, funerals or any of a dozen other activities.

They don’t know about the couple huddled on the bed in room 4D—both numb and silent, staring at the snow gathering on the windowsill.

To Téa, the world outside this room seems impossibly distant and deeply irrelevant. All that matters is the man in her arms.

His stories float through her mind, slotting themselves into places where questions still live, until there are no more questions. She understands him now...she understands everything. But she can’t let herself feel yet, for his sake.

She remembers an insight she’d had yesterday—that Todd’s suffering, not his bitterness, would be the thing to finally obliterate her—and she’d been right. Everything she’d believed about herself, all the rigid self-definitions that she’d clung to, that she’d fought so fiercely to defend…are gone now, swept away by the simple act of loving unconditionally, bearing witness to profound pain with no thought for herself. The idea of being overwhelmed by him had terrified her once, had driven her to horrific extremes. Yet now that it’s happened...she’s more deeply herself than she’s ever been in her life.

She’s looking past his golden-brown mane to the cold, uninspiring sky beyond, worrying about what these long-suppressed revelations might do to his already fragile psyche. She’s been careful not to disturb him in the half-hour or so since he drifted into silence. His breathing had been labored at first, punctuated by small sounds of pain or fear, and he’d retreated into her embrace as far as he could go, pulled her arm around him tightly, held it to his chest and interlaced his fingers with hers...and soon his breathing had deepened and synchronized with hers, and that’s how they've remained...

Until one of their stomachs grumbles.

“That was you,” Todd says. His voice is rough and weak, but it’s like a song to Téa’s ears. At least he’s responsive, aware of his surroundings...and comfortingly grumpy. Everything seems fraught in these early moments, so heavy with the potential to do harm if she gets it wrong. 

She presses her lips to his hair, inhales his scent. “Uh-uh, it was you,” she says, resolving to behave as normally as possible. “What we need here is room service—I’ll call down. One of everything.” She starts to gently untangle her arm from around him, but he stiffens and hangs on…so she lays with him and waits in the stillness of the room.

Finally he whispers, “No monsters?”

She hesitates, no idea how to respond. “What do you think?” she says softly.

“I think...people are fucked up,” he says, sounding dazed.

“I think that’s true.”

He goes quiet again. Gradually she becomes aware of the intimacy of his heartbeat beneath her hand and closes her eyes to focus on it, on the life force strong within him, even now.

“Téa...?”

“Right here.”

“You won’t...,” he says, haltingly. “You won’t... _use_ this...,”

She lets the stab of pain fade before she answers. “No, Todd. Never.”

His head moves in a slight nod.

“I don’t,” he rasps, clears his throat and starts again. “Don’t want to talk anymore...about anything.”

She gives him a careful hug. “Okay. We won’t talk then.”

He lets go of her hand and as she slips away he slowly rolls into the spot where she’d been. He watches her with dull eyes.

When her feet hit the floor she realizes how long it’s been since she did anything...routine. She tightens the belt of her robe and heads toward the bathroom instead of the corner where the desk and phone are.

“Where you going?” he says with a touch of alarm. It’s the first inflection she’s heard in his voice.

“First things first.” She tilts her head toward the bathroom.

His flat gaze follows her until she closes the door.

###

She can feel now. She can let go. She grips the sink until her fingers turn white, grinds her teeth and chokes with rage and grief on behalf of that little boy in flannel pajamas, guilt eviscerating her because she drove him right back into the arms of his monster...and _yes, there are monsters, there fucking well are._

She slides to her knees, rocks her body and silently wails for the grown man still cowering in his childhood bed, and for all of his victims...including herself. Including himself. Wave after wave of pain slams into her, keeps her prone on the cold tile floor until gradually it subsides enough that she can push to her feet and can get herself cleaned up with shaking hands, wash her face, brush her teeth, run her fingers through her hair because she took her brush to another room when she tried to escape, but got nowhere at all...

_Téa...you won’t use this..._

Will there ever truly be trust in his life...? How _can_ there be...and does it even matter, if there’s enough love...?

She grabs her old, bloodied robe from the hook on the back of the door and throws it on the floor next to a pile of clothes. His clothes. She was never in the habit of picking up after him, but she does now, lifts and smoothes each garment over her arm in turn—his silk shirt, his vest with the cold buttons, his jacket and pants—she presses the soft wool to her nose, remembers the texture against her skin as he held her in his lap and they fucked each other. That’s what it was. Physical release, all emotion stuffed so far down that even that profound act couldn’t set it free. But that was a lifetime ago.

A flash of red grabs her attention—her torn underwear, deep in the wastebasket where she’d jammed it—and ugly sounds erupt in her head:

_Your dead mama teach you to be a slut?...Your dead daddy teach you to be a pussy? Show daddy what a MAN you are...You think I liked having you crawl all over me like a swarm of fucking cockroaches? Jesus what a stench…_

But that was a lifetime ago, too, and since then reality has shifted...and the two of them with it. She feels vertiginous, like she’s looking down from a great height, sickened by what crippling fear had driven them both to...

_People are fucked up..._

Yes, indeed.

She carefully hangs his clothes on the hook, folds his boxer briefs and lays them on the counter like an attentive wife might do. She allows herself to try on that identity, if only this once, without preconceptions or judgements...just lets the feeling of it wash over her.

To be open, to relinquish control, to accept that she really doesn’t have a clue about anything—that’s an orientation to the world that will be new for her, but necessary if she wants to stay on this crazy ride. To say yes to whatever is coming.

To forgive.

###

When she comes out, she’s shocked to see Todd standing naked before the mirror above the dresser. She stops a good distance behind him and he glances at her reflection once, but doesn’t acknowledge her. He’s looking at his own face with strange curiosity, his eyes slowly scanning each feature in turn—brow, high cheekbones, the slope of his nose, pausing at his mouth to watch his the tip of his tongue emerge and wet his lips, then continuing down the column of his throat, sweeping across his collarbones from one shoulder to the other, then down to his chest…head tilting, appraising, gaze lingering like an intimate caress.

“I don’t look like a freak, do I...?” he murmurs, raising his fingers to his mouth.

She’s been watching, yet not, caught between concern and embarrassment, but the question makes her stomach churn. “God, no, Todd, of course not.”

He touches his lips, runs the back of his fingers over his cheeks. “Maybe he saw something... _wrong_ in me, something that made him—,”

“—No, it wasn’t your fault!” she says forcefully, but he doesn’t react. She restrains herself from rushing to his side, wrapping her arms around him and pointing out in logical detail all the ways he was an innocent victim. It would make her feel better, but it’s much too soon…and he’s not listening anyway.

His hands are drifting over his chest now, thumbs brushing his nipples, and he’s stepping back to see more of himself, his eyes sliding over his abdomen, his narrow hips, pelvis, the stirrings of an erection…and wherever his eyes move, his hands follow with light, lingering caresses. He seems lost in this intensely private moment, completely unaware of Téa. But when he reaches for his penis, she has to stop him.

“Hey, Todd,” she says nonchalantly, as if she just strolled out of the bathroom.

His eyes move to her reflection like he’s coming out of a dream.

“Oh, hey Téa,” he greets her, unconcerned, hands floating absently down to his sides. His gaze fixes on her lapel. “Where’s the blood?”

“The...?

“On the robe. There was blood on it before.”

She glances down. “Oh, no, this is a new one, from the other room.”

He turns to face her. “What, you don’t wear real clothes anymore?”

The lifted brow and the hint of a grin make him seem almost himself—except that he’s quite calmly standing in front of her stark naked.

“Neither do you, it seems,” she grunts. He just blinks at her with a benign expression and turns away, and she follows, watching closely—as she has so many times in past fifteen-plus hours—for clues to his mental state. She tries to remain detached, but as he wanders to the window, she’s struck by how utterly _leonine_ he is: the sensual grace, the contained power of his movements, the thick hair flowing over his broad shoulders...

“What are you thinking?” he says, as if he knows.

She takes it straight on. “I’m thinking that you’re beautiful.”

He looks out at the falling snow for a moment, and when he speaks, he’s reassuringly snide.

“Different robe, different room, same Delgado.”

_Puta slut whore._

He didn’t say it, didn’t even imply it, but she can’t help feeling the sting of ancient, internalized shame. “Different Delgado,” she says, forcing herself to let it go.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t ask, she doesn’t elaborate.

His hand drifts to his chest again, lightly fingering the generous spray of hair. “I’m _beautiful_ ,” he repeats absently to himself, and says in a distant sing-song, “ _Sugar sweet as candy...lips like cherry wine_...,”

“Todd...?”

He looks toward, but not at her. “I’m...remembering things...,”

It strikes her like a blow how out of her depth she is. “Hey,” she says gently and cocks her head to get his attention. “There are people who can help you, Todd, you know?”

He comes back from wherever he was with a belligerent roll of his shoulders. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I know, but we kind of _are_ talking about it.”

He scowls at her. “Where the hell’s my breakfast.”

“I haven’t called yet. I’m worried about you, okay? You’ve re-experienced terrible trauma, and I—,”

“—That’s how I got in trouble with you.”

She’s brought up short and looks at him blankly.

“Our deal, this whole mess. If I’d been old and fat and bald with halitosis and a droopy ass, none of this would have happened, right? We’d be in the penthouse with Shorty, happy in our neutral corners.”

“You underestimate the allure of your sparkling personality,” she says, sparring with him out of habit.

“And my skill in the kitchen.” He huffs a laugh, but she clearly sees the pained sincerity beneath the wisecracks. She decides to give it a wide berth for now.

“Speaking of kitchens...,” she smiles, as much as she can, and turns toward the phone.

“Hey, Delgado.” 

She turns back and he dips his chin, looks at her from under his brow. His eyes move over her body with such sudden heat that she feels as naked as he is. “What was it...really?” He steps closer, his voice almost sultry. “Was it my eyes? Did you like the way I looked at you?”

Her smile freezes and fades.

“Was it my mouth? Did you like to think about my mouth...what I could do with it?”

She feels her face flush hot. “Stop it, Todd, please.”

“The thing is...he told me to pout for him. So I did.” As soon as the words are out, his body goes slack, eyes haunted, breath coming fast and harsh.

Téa moves slowly, deliberately, until she’s directly in front of him. She’s dizzy with grief, yearns to touch him, but keeps her arms at her sides. “Look at me.” His wide eyes lock into hers like he’s grabbing a lifeline.

“You did what you had to do to survive, Todd.”

He turns his head away and stares hard out the window.

“You were a little boy. You didn’t invite it. You didn’t...you didn’t seduce him, do you understand me?”

A spasm ripples through him and he crosses his arms over his chest, jaw working.

“ _He_ was the freak. There was something deeply wrong with _him_ , not with you. You were a victim. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah yeah, I hear you, Delgado,” he mutters. “You’re standing right here. You think I’m deaf?”

She takes a breath, takes a chance. “And you didn’t drive him to it with your overpowering beauty. Trust me.”

That drags a shaky laugh out of him. He pushes his hair back with both hands and holds it there, staring somewhere inside himself.

“He was fucked up...,” It’s almost a question, and he searches her face as though looking for confirmation.

“Yes, Todd. Very,” she says.

“People are fucked up.”

“Some people are,” she says, and adds fiercely. “And some people fight like hell to be better.”

He makes a small sound in the back of his throat, his face collapses and he reaches out to her so fast that she instinctively flinches. He jerks his hand back, pain so vivid in his eyes that she rushes to repair the damage.

“No, it’s okay! You took me by surprise, Todd, that’s all.” She moves closer and looks up into his face as gently as she can. “What were you going to do?”

Days ago, or even hours ago, he would have grumbled, _Whatever_ , and turned away from her. But now he swallows hard, pulls a deep breath, and like a whisper, he brushes her cheek with the back of his hand. It seems difficult for him to speak, but he manages.

“Thanks... you know? Thank you.”

She lays her hand over his and nods, quick tears spilling down her cheeks. Part of her wants to know what, specifically, he’s thanking her for, but she shuts it down and just looks into his eyes instead. Miraculously, he looks right back, doesn’t try to pull away or hide the emotion evident there, or the strange, silent plea...

“The thing is...,” he starts, and swallows hard. “The thing is...I feel him now. Everywhere. What if...what if it never goes away...,”

It’s a hunted tone, on the edge of despair, and she feels his need right down to her bones. “Are you asking me for something, Todd?”

He suddenly looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin and slink away into a corner. But he doesn’t move, just drops his eyes and says in a rush, “It helped before, when you were...close by. Just...don’t leave yet.”

Words catch in her throat, so she turns her head and presses a long, hard kiss onto his hand, feeling his heat, inhaling his scent, remembering that not so long ago, he would have died before admitting such a thing. When she’s able, she says, “I’m not going anywhere. Ever.”

He stiffens, then falls away from her in something like slow motion. He lands hard on the bed and sits there, hair swinging, hands braced on either side of him, gaping at the floor.

“That’s crazy,” he gasps.

It must seem crazy to him, this sudden about-face after weeks of her increasingly desperate attempts to get free of him. But to Téa, it’s not sudden at all…it’s perfect, it’s inevitable, though it may, in fact, be crazy. 

His face darkens into a glower. “This is pity, isn’t it.”

“Don’t you do that,” she growls into this all-to-familiar moment and plants her fists on her hips. “Don’t you go looking for reasons to stomp on this.”

He raises searching eyes to her face. His expression is opaque, unreadable.

“Okay,” he says finally, gently. “So then _this_ is that...love thing.”

Téa gathers her courage and resolve, and says, “Yes. This is _that love thing_.” It’s the time for declarations, the time to stop hiding, once and for all, and she pours everything she feels into that simple phrase—she wills it to reassure, to shred fear, banish pain, penetrate into dark places and lighten them up a bit. She can try, anyway.

But Todd suddenly seems to realize he’s naked. He drags the rumpled sheet over his pelvis and the bedspread on top of that, turns his face to the window and stares out at the steady snowfall with a grim expression. His shoulders are hunched, jaw clenching, unclenching, tongue moving behind his upper lip…

And it hits her like a tornado, sucks all the air from her lungs, picks her up and sets her down someplace utterly unexpected. He hasn’t said a word...but she _knows_.

“You don’t want me to stay,” she says, stunned.

He’s silent, motionless.

“You want the divorce.”

He turns his head as far away from her as possible and wipes his thumb under his eye.

She grabs the bedpost and pivots around it, drops down onto the foot of the bed before she collapses. The snow is blowing wildly out the window and all she sees is white.

“What is it about me and you and blizzards,” she says hollowly...but for once there are no tears, because she understands him.

She understands everything.

And they sit side by side, listening to the mundane sounds of the outside world go on without them.


	15. Chapter 15

Todd isn't interested in blizzards or the outside world. He's staring at his fist, torn and smeared with blood. There's blood on the pillow sham, blood on the sheet, blood on the wall. Blood everywhere. It reinforces the stunning choice he's just made, and helps lessen the grief.

"What about Starr?" Téa says after a long silence, and he chokes down a sob that, if he let it out, would never end. The current is pulling both of them away from him whether he's asleep or awake, and there's nothing he can do now but let them go.

"Take her," he says bitterly.

"But...but Blair—,"

"—We'll figure it out, Delgado. It won't be forever."

"These are big decisions, Todd. Are you sure you want to make them...now?" She addresses him in reasonable tones that seem laughable under the circumstances. She should be screaming. The whole world should be screaming.

"Better now than when it's too late. I can't be worrying about people. I have a lot of shit to get through."

_Or that old motherfucker will never stop wrecking my life..._

He's amazed that the explosion of memories hasn't flattened him, that he's still functioning as well as he is—at least he assumes he's functioning, that what's happening now isn't another in a long line of delusions. But it's only a matter of time; the storm will come, and it's up to him to keep the carnage to a minimum.

Téa is nodding, her tears flowing freely now. A drop splashes his arm, which means she's much too close. She's always been too close, seen too much, and now she's seen everything. Literally and figuratively. He adjusts the bedding in his lap, pulls the sheet tight around his waist. He'd been in a weird dream earlier, a kind of fugue where he'd been seeing himself through other eyes, had been touching himself…

It makes him sick that she witnessed that. Sick.

"I'd like to help," she says.

"Then you have to get away from me."

"I know." Her voice is so small, so hurt. So resolved.

A frantic impulse makes him grab her hand, pull it into his lap, hold on much too tightly and say, "But not right now."

They sit for a long time, not speaking. His mind is threatening to fill the quiet with the hated sounds of clicks and footsteps and heavy wet breathing, so he focuses on Téa, watches his thumb travel the hills and valleys of her knuckles. He's seething inside. He _hates_ this weakness and sniveling, clinging to her the way he's been doing. He doesn't know what he wants from her — it's just that he doesn't feel alone in his own body anymore, and he needs the distraction of another body, other hands than the hands that keep pawing at him, other eyes that see deeper…

 It occurs to him that she isn't fighting his decision to finally end it, that maybe this is all okay with her, so he says too loudly into the silence,

"Well, looks like you won after all, Delgado. You got what you wanted."

She sniffs, wipes her nose on her puffy white sleeve. "You don't believe that for a second. There aren't any winners here, Todd."

"Hey, you callin' me a loser?" It's a weak attempt at humor, to mask his fresh grief at the finality of it all. The post-game wrap-up.

She leans her head companionably on his shoulder. "Let's just say we're...co-non-victors. Can you live with that?"

"Gonna have to," he grunts. And to distract himself from her soft hair spilling down his bare arm, he says, "So who do you think fucked it up more?"

"You. Definitely you," she laughs.

"You helped a helluva lot though, Delgado."

"I did. I really did." She straightens up suddenly, like he reminded her of a puzzle she's been trying to solve. "You know, I didn't even recognize myself. I mean, who was more real—the Delgado who…turned you into a monster, or the Delgado who sang to you? And _you_ —deep down, are you more the Todd who...who _violated_ me, or the Todd who—," she breaks off, like she's unsure how, or whether, to continue.

"Pinned you to the mattress, screamed that he hated you, fell apart before your eyes...," he offers.

"I was going to say, made love to me last night."

"Oh." His cheeks flush hot; he clears his throat. "I don't know. Maybe both. Equally."

"Both," she says pensively. "Positive and negative space..."

"Huh?"

"Just something the lace said." She sighs deeply, and when he looks at her like she's nuts, she adds, "Never mind."

"It's this room, that's what it is," he says, playing with her fingers, a bit stunned by her blunt philosophizing. "It makes people crazy. Bad things happen in this room. We should warn management."

"I don't know...," she bites her lip, pondering. "Wasn't all bad."

"We did do some excellent bantering."

"True. And, if nothing else, the top of that dresser sure got a good polishing."

" _Fuck…_! Jesus, Delgado! _"_ He scrubs a hand over his face to wipe away the images of violence, but she laughs, like diamonds in thick black tar. Hot pressure flares in his chest…he recognizes it as love, and the pain of it is almost unbearable.

"Okay, how about this," he says, forcing himself hard into banter mode. "I kicked the shit out of Andy. That was fun!"

"You barely laid a finger on him, Todd."

"Are you kidding me? He scampered out of here with his little clerical collar between his legs!"

She rolls her eyes. "Fine, you win. That's exactly what happened." She smiles, tilts her head down and looks up at him through her lashes—it's that same playful, sexy, I'm-yours-if-you-want-me expression that he's seen a hundred times. Only this time, it absolutely wrecks him.

"Oh God, don't do that," he gasps and jerks his head away. "Don't look at me like that."

He feels her stiffen and try to pull away the hand he's still holding…but he doesn't let go.

"This is impossible, Todd," she says, voice floating on fresh tears. "If you want me to go, you have to _let me_. This hurts too much."

A howl breaks loose from his heart, seizes him by the throat, but he manages to swallow it down.

"Not yet."

"Todd..."

"Shhh. Lay down with me," he's appalled to hear himself say. "Just for a little while."

Her eyes snap to his. "Are you changing your mind about the div—"

"—No."

"So this is just a new form of torture."

He thinks a moment and squeezes her hand. "Yeah."

Her reluctant smile is so beautiful that it scours away all the dirt from the world, the horror from his mind, the outrage from his body…and he's able to _forget_ …

"Look, you don't even have to go far." He lets go of her hand and reaches behind him to pat the mattress. "Just lay back and scoot around toward the headboard."

She rolls her eyes and sighs.

"Tell me you love me, Delgado," he says playfully, but holds his breath in case she tells him, rightly, to fuck off.

But she laughs more diamonds. "Jesus! Fine. I love you, you sadist."

Glowing inside, he watches her turn and crawl onto the bed, and with a series of long-suffering grumbles, she smooths what's left of the tangled covers and lays down on her side. He wades toward her on his knees, sheet cinched tight around his waist, and flops down facing her.

"Hey," he says, looking into the eyes that have loved him and hated him with equal passion, and feeling as close to her as he's ever felt to another human being.

"Hey," she says, snuggling into her robe. "This is somehow familiar."

"Shhh." He roughly pushes away anything that isn't this moment. "New page."

"Okay. New page. By the way, you can be incredibly adorable sometimes _,_ Todd. But I'm sure you get tired of hearing that." Her eyes are sparkling, her voice is sparkling, she's blindingly bright and he can't speak, can't banter, can't do anything at all but gently tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear and hope his heart doesn't burst.

She's watching his eyes, scanning his face until he feels like a bug under a magnifying glass.

"So...you do love me," she says, the tears shimmering.

And there, his heart bursts. But nothing says he has to admit it right away.

"How can one person cry so much?" he mutters. "You should be a dehydrated pile of dust by now, Delgado."

She laughs through the tears, and then her fingertips are on his lips…a gentle, loving caress that sparks like electricity. He starts to withdraw from all the ramifications of this touch, but he forces himself to relax and let her do what she wants...let whatever happens, happen. Her eyes soften as she sees his consent, and she begins to explore his mouth, her fingers wandering into his goatee, and he lets her play, lets her laugh like music as she pushes up against the grain, finger-combs the whiskers in different directions, then pets them down again like she's tidying up. She returns to his lips with a delighted smile, and he can't help but kiss her fingertips, take her hand gently and press it to his cheek, brush his mouth over her delicate, bruised wrist. When he rolls toward her and slides his hands into her hair, she parts her lips for him and with a low moan that surges up from deep inside him, he sinks deeply into that impossible softness, keeps sinking, absorbing her sighs, her heat, the energy building as her frail body melts…

He eases back to see her face, the smoky, heavy-lidded pleasure…and the sight ignites him. He returns to her mouth ravenously, locking on, tongue plunging, gliding…and with a rough urgency, he pushes back the lapel of her robe to free her breast. He needs her nipple in his mouth, he needs to feel it harden under his tongue. He needs her skin and her wetness and her hands on him and her cries in his ear and his cock inside her. He's driven by wild hunger, nothing else—no dark impulses, nothing desperate chasing or resisting. It's such a strange feeling that he becomes aware of it through the haze, and it takes him a moment to recognize it for what it is.

Pure, simple _lust_.

He stops what he's doing and laughs like the world has just come into focus, revealing a brand new color.

Téa laughs, too, with an edge of nervous confusion, though her eyes are darker now, her lips red and blooming...just the way he likes them.

"What's happening, Todd?"

"Don't know," he says breathlessly. "Don't stop."

He rolls her over, seizes her breast in his hand and she cries out, back arching, offering herself, and he's got her in his mouth within seconds, teasing and sucking her taut nipple. He slips his arm under the small of her back and pulls her closer, presses his pelvis against her and rocks, simply because he's hard and wants the friction, wants her to _know_. Her small shivery cries are making his blood smoke, her soft thighs are moving and curling eagerly around his hips, hands in his hair, tangled and clutching…then one is moving down his back, the fingernails light and trailing over his naked skin…then harder, too hard, scraping...dragging lower…causing pain and hot anxiety that makes him pull his mouth away from her.

"Téa," he says, but the room is getting darker and she's not stopping. There's suddenly a heavy weight on the back of his thighs, hands grabbing his ass, savage fingers digging in, spreading—

"Oh fuck, no, Jesus, _stop stop_ ," he gasps and shoves himself violently away from her. He's shaking, covered in sweat, can't get air…and he cries out again because the brutal hands are still on him...

_Todd_

_Todd_

"I'm here," he says. "I'm here." His voice is trembling like he's driving over cobblestones. His shoulder is against something hard. Téa is on all fours in the middle of the bed, her wet, grief-stricken eyes boring into him. "I'm here, it's okay," he says to her, trying to sound reassuring though his mouth is bone dry. "Too soon, that's all. Too soon."

"I'm so sorry," she whispers.

He remembers hands…

"You didn't touch my...did you touch my...backside?"

She shakes her head heavily, full lips forming the word _no_. He wants to see her crawling toward him while she licks those lips, red and blooming, but he probably shouldn't tell her that now. He realizes that he's curled up against the headboard, bedding and pillows piled high around him like he's a kid in a self-made fort.

A _kid_...

He goes cold with shock and drags his eyes back to Téa.

"How long," he rasps.

She sinks down onto the bed…with relief or exhaustion or despair…so hard to tell the difference.

"A little over five minutes," she says.

He nods. "Did I hurt you?"

"No, Todd. No."

He nods again, keeps nodding...is still nodding when he suddenly slams his head back against the headboard, once, twice, three times—all good hard cracks. Then he wraps his arms around himself, and cries.

_**To be continued...** _

 


	16. Chapter 16

"He's taken everything," he says, like a wisp of air.

"Not everything," she says...because it's true. It  _has_  to be.

But neither says anything more.

So Téa stares into space, acutely aware of the low sounds of male despair coming from an arm's length away. She doesn't reach, doesn't respond. She longs to comfort him, but she's learning when to acknowledge his pain, and when to give it privacy. And there's nothing at all to be done that won't make it worse.

His name doesn't appear in her mind now...just echoes of anguish and her own voice silently whispering,  _mi amor_ … _mi amor_ …my love…my love…

So she stares. It's comforting to do that, a mini-vacation, just drifting, letting the brain go numb. Better that than think about waking nightmares and monsters so cruel they pervert love and make terrified children barricade themselves uselessly behind pillows...even twenty years later. Better to drift than think about having solved all the mysteries, only to be left with a heart broken so wide open that it hurts to breathe…

It's this room. This godforsaken room, with its heavy gothic furniture, screwy wiring, barely-functioning heat, too-thin walls. Bad things happen in this room.

_You're right, mi amor, this room makes people crazy. It gives us everything we want, only to tear it away again and again…_

Laughter, passion, freedom, intimacy… gone gone gone gone.

But she knows the truth: it's her fault. She pictures herself reaching out, touching his bowed head, pleading...

_Perdóname, mi amor, forgive me for not understanding...forgive me for pushing you where you never should have gone… too soon too soon… but I'm here if you need me, I'm yours if you want me, I'm yours…_

But she doesn't do that. She stays where she is, sitting motionless on the bed, hands folded in her lap...until his low voice penetrates her guilt.

"Pillow forts," he says from far away, voice flat, drained of life. "That's so old. I was…four. Five. I remember now…I would line up my stuffed animals on my bed…monkeys…I loved monkeys when I was little. They were my first line of defense against him. My army of monkeys. Then the pillows. Then nothing."

She squeezes her eyes tight, not seeing, but seeing it all.

"Did I say anything about the monkeys when I went away just now?" he asks, with genuine concern.

She shakes her head, tears sliding like acid down her cheeks.

"Okay. Okay. 'Cause I don't know what ever happened to them."

She senses movement, opens her eyes to see him absently tracing the carved pattern on the wooden bedpost. There's no rage, no sorrow…no spirit animating him at all. Everything that made him  _him_  has been extinguished.

 _Mi amor_ … _mi amor_...

She can't bear this new loss and trembles under the weight of all the things he doesn't seem to be feeling. But she can't allow herself to feel them either or she'll shatter. She makes a mighty lunge at normalcy.

"You know what?" she says, too brightly. "We should eat. Why don't I call—,"

"—You should go," he says softly.

She winces at an irrational stab of alarm, but he heads her off.

"It's okay. I'm fine. Really." It's the same docile tone he used when he stood naked in front of the mirror. He slides his finger along a shallow groove in the bedpost. "It's funny. For so long, I  _wouldn't_  be with you…and now I  _can't_. Don't you think that's funny?"

"Shhh…," she murmurs, aching to fix this for him, make it all go away. "It's too soon, it's too fresh…give it time."

"No time…too late…doesn't matter. He's everywhere. You should go."

The alarm floods her body until it's all she feels.

"No. I won't go. I won't leave you like this."

"But I don't want to be your husband anymore." He drops his hand, swings his head toward her heavily and seems to look right through her with red-rimmed eyes. "I'm a bad husband. I'm weak and twisted and I want you to go."

A thousand protests erupt in her mind and want to force their way out of her mouth, but she says simply: "This is my room."

That seems to rouse him enough that he focuses on her, and she's thrilled to see the slightest flash of irritation before he drifts back into numb detachment.

"I guess I'll go then." He sluggishly pushes at pillows, trying to clear a path for himself, but he can barely move.

"No, wait." Téa scrambles to her knees and reaches, grabs his arm without thinking.

He freezes and looks down at her hand. She starts to pull it away, but he lays his other hand on top of hers and, in a robotic slow-motion, he caresses her skin with his thumb. He stares down for a long time, as though an answer might lie somewhere in that contact.

Finally he inhales sharply, spine straightening, and in Todd's own voice he says, "I want to keep going."

Téa squeezes his arm. "No, Todd. You're not ready to go—"

"—No. I mean what we were doing before." He looks up at her, eyes like fire…all Todd again. "I want to keep going. A swan dive into the abyss, Delgado."

She flushes hot, then cold, remembering his hungry mouth on her breast, his erection rocking against her through the sheet...then the vanishing, the terror, the helplessness...

Stunned by his turn-around, she shakes her head...then faster when his hand slips behind her head and he starts pulling her toward him. "That's crazy, Todd. No, my God…,"

"Yes," he says urgently, lips hard against her cheek. "Right now. Come on. It felt good, right? You wanna fuck me, right?"

She cries out, twists her head away, pushes at his grasping hands. " _What?_  No! Absolutely not. It's too dangerous, Todd. You didn't see yourself just now. I'm not trained to deal with any of this, I'm not qualified to even  _talk_ —," she breaks off, flooded with images of all the times he's faded and vanished from sight, and new images of restraints, of shock therapy, of his vacant, haunted eyes staring at internal horrors for the rest of his life…and Starr left alone… _Starr_ …

" _No_. You need help, Todd. What if—,"

"—Shhh," he cuts her off, voice high and tinged with mania. "I have help, I have you! You're Téa Delgado—you have the power to stop monsters in their tracks. You're a fucking superhero!"

She flares, indignant. "Don't you mock me."

"Mock you? I'm not mocking you. Believe me." He takes her face between his hands, drills right into her eyes and it's impossible to look away. "You know how to reach me, right? And you know me," he rushes, tumbling over his words. "You know everything, e _verything...y_ ou have to do this, Téa, you're the only one and isn't this kind of what you've always wanted…to get inside, to go monster hunting with me?"

"Didn't you want the divorce to  _protect_  me from you and your monsters?"

"But you won't leave!" he wails. "You won't leave, you won't help — what are you good for, color commentary?"

She bristles, juts out her chin, grappling for both dignity and control of the situation. "You don't need a superhero and you don't need a monster hunter. What you need is a mental health professional."

He suddenly grabs her shoulders with iron claws and shakes her hard. "Now you listen to me," he says, low and dangerous. "And look at me, because I want to make sure you're getting this. No way am I gonna open myself up to some shrink. No one, and I mean  _no one_  outside this room is  _ever_  gonna hear this shit, do you understand me? It's mine, it's private, and I'll deal with it in my way."

"By forcing  _me_  to deal with it? By treating me like some kind of  _whore_?" she cries, a lifetime of tangled emotions rushing to the surface.

He barks an ugly laugh. "Come on, who's the piece of meat around here?" He grabs her hand and drags it beneath the sheet toward his groin. "This is what you want from me. This is all you ever wanted."

The tip of his erection is silken heat against her fingers. She quickly tries to yank her hand away, but his strength and aggression are overwhelming, like a wall of fire singeing her lungs, and she has to grit her teeth to speak. "That's a bullshit self-serving lie, Todd. Let me go,  _now_."

He just sneers, teeth bared. "No. No way. That old bastard still has me hostage. I'm sick of sniveling and I'm sick of hiding and I won't be a fucking hostage anymore…and you owe me."

She gapes at him, stunned.

"Yeah, and you know it." He grabs her jaw between his fingers and squeezes, eyes wild. "Just look at the guilt in that face. You know this is your fault, and it's eating you alive, Delgado. Here's your chance to make amends."

He drags her hand lower and gives it a twist, silently reminding her of how easily he'd immobilized her earlier…that he could do it again and take what he wants…

Like  _hell_  he will. "Stop this, Todd," she hisses. "You're scaring me."

"No, that's not fear—I'm pissing you off. I can see it in your eyes." His voice is gravelly, but she can feel him trembling, his stomach slick with sweat. " _Good_. Be mad. Be furious that you have to go through this crap, 'cause I sure am. I'm furious that I got fucked over like that. I'm furious that that monstrous piece of shit never got what he deserved."

He rears up and slams his mouth down on hers, lets her hand go and shoves frantically at her robe, has it open before she's able to summon enough strength to wrench away with punching fists and kicking feet...but he recovers instantly, grabs her painfully by the hair and gives her a crazed, black smile. "This isn't the time to say  _no_  to me, Téa…"

Panic is so close…her own trauma so fresh, still echoing in her bruised body, and she could easily let it swallow her whole…but she understands the thing that's driving him — she's seen its power — and she forces herself to speak calmly.

"Are you going to rape me, Todd?"

It's a pitched moment, could go either way as they lock eyes like two bulls vying for dominance. But he blinks first, focuses, pushes her clear of him with a shudder and a groan, expression twisted in sheer nausea. He jams his fingers into his eyes, scrubs at his face, and when his hands drop away, he's gone again...benign, empty. He slowly swivels his head, blinks at the room like he doesn't know where he is…and doesn't care.

"Todd," she says, laying a gentle hand on his arm, though she really wants to kick the shit out of him. He lets her touch him, doesn't resist. He's no longer trembling…but when she raises her other hand, he cringes as though he intuits her mood and expects a blow.

Instead, she caresses his cheek. " _Mi amor_ ," she whispers.

His eyes slip closed and he sags with a whimper, lowers his forehead until it rests against hers.

"Help me," he says. It's Todd's voice, but threadbare and utterly defeated. "He's inside me. He's everywhere. I feel him  _everywhere_. You have to help me. Please, make him go away."

#

Téa moves pillows, smooths tangled blankets to create a flat space for Todd on the bed. She's the one trembling now. She should be calling Viki, getting names, arranging for help, or at the very least ordering room service to get some nourishment into him. It's sheer arrogance on her part, and full-blown delusion on his part, to think she can chase away a lifetime of trauma...if only for a little while. An insane, fragile hope, but it's enough to make her lay Todd gently back on the bed, even as he drags the sheet over his pelvis to keep himself covered. He shoves a pillow under his head and she watches him get settled, hesitates for a long time before kneeling beside him on the mattress.

"Todd," she says, mouth like cotton as she looks down into his dazed, troubled face. "I won't—,"

"—I know. Just…touch me. That's all. I have to feel something else, besides…besides… _besides_ —,"

"—Shh, shh, I know, it's okay." It's obvious from his rising color, his mounting anxiety, that he's in danger of spinning out again, so she lays a hand on his forehead. "It's okay. It's just us here. We're safe."

He shakes himself out and exhales a blast of air that bathes her face, but it doesn't make a bit of difference — he's rigid as a corpse, sweating under her hand, fists clenched.

She suddenly goes as rigid as he is, crippled by inadequacy, imagining all the ways this could go wrong.…until he rolls his shoulder against her leg.

"Relax, Delgado. It's not surgery," he says, voice tight, shivery. "You've touched people before…I've seen you."

She lets loose a choked, grateful laugh.

His eyes fix on her face — tense, light eyes the color of moss in a sunlit stream are fighting down fear even as they try to reassure her…

"Look," he says. "If it starts to get rough, I'll let you know. No powering through. Okay?"

She carefully brushes a few strands of hair from his overheated skin. "For the record, Todd, I think this is a colossally bad idea."

"Duly noted, counselor."

"It's not too late to order breakfast. Blueberry muffins… _yum_ ," she smiles, but jerks her head up and squeezes her eyelids tight before quick tears can spill over onto his skin. moments later she blinks, crisis averted, and when she looks down again, he's watching her with such a tender, open expression that she whimpers.

"So, the thing is...," he stops, bites his lips. The back of his hand comes up and gently brushes her cheek. "I'm a pathetic, insane fucking mess and I don't deserve you and I'll never understand why you stuck around the way you did…but…I love you. I just wanted to say it." His hand drops, his eyes dart past her face and lock hard onto the coffered ceiling. "Don't make a big thing."

All the air has been sucked from the world, but she manages a stunned laugh, buoyed on a wave of joy she's sure will lift her right off the bed. She smooths her palms over his hair as nonchalantly as she can, and says, "Okay."

He nods once, mouth twisting to fight back a smile. "Get on with it, Delgado," he mutters.

So wonderfully caustic. She laughs again, runs a playful finger down the long slope of his nose, tweaks the tip as he mock-scowls. It's a rare moment of bliss and she has the presence of mind to recognize it, to press it hard into her psyche and make it an indelible part of her. No matter what happens, she has this.

_No matter what happens…_

The thought drags her roughly back to the point of this exercise, and her smile fades.

"This is for you,  _mi amor_ ," she murmurs. "Just for you. No goal…no agenda…no expectations." She lightly strokes the ridges of his furrowed brow, taking her time to smooth the creases in his forehead until he lets go a shaky sigh. But he radiates so much tension that she begins to inhale and exhale, deeply, rhythmically, and urges him to copy her. He takes the cue and as their breathing synchronizes, he gradually sags, his jaw unclenches, fists loosen.

"Nothing to prove,  _querido_ ," she whispers. "Nothing to fear."

She feels small facial muscles tighten and slacken beneath her fingertips, touches the small scar in his left eyebrow where no hair grows, bends down instinctively to kiss it…and he lets her.

She floats her thumbs over his open eyes until they close, and kisses each lid softly, treasuring this gift of intimacy he's giving her, lets her hair trail over his skin as she moves her hands to his cheeks, lays a palm on his recent bruise. It's hot to the touch, hot against her lips.

"Mean right hook," he mumbles, audibly breathing in the scent of her hair. "You got me good."

"Does it hurt?"

He shrugs. "Deserved it."

She leans up slightly to watch her thumb trace the hook-shaped scar on his right cheek.

"Deserved the hell out of that, too," he says quietly...the tip of a very big iceberg.

She leans down to kiss it, but he jerks his head away. "Don't."

A strange hurt rises, but she swallows it down and continues with whisper touches over his flushed, flawless skin, scratchy stubble, soft beard…and when she draws her fingertips down over his jaw, he lifts his chin as though unconsciously elongating his throat for her, making himself even more vulnerable. Heat floods her body, and for the first time she realizes there's another kind of danger here...and that she has some serious compartmentalizing to do.

She resolves not to touch him the way she watched him touch himself in the mirror — no lingering, no sensual caresses. This is about creating a few moments of peace...it's not meant to be erotic. So she moves on to the relative safety of his arms, leaning over to reach both sides of him at once. With flat palms, she strokes the powerful shoulders, the long, strong biceps, the soft creases inside his elbows, the swell of veins on smooth forearms. Memories arrive as she encircles his wrists, so thick that her fingers don't meet…

_You have the power to stop monsters in their tracks. You're a fucking superhero…_

It's true that her voice, that this exact touch, have brought him back from dark places. Sometimes. Not always…

When she strokes his upturned palms, his hands reflexively curl like a child's to grasp her fingers…but he stiffens as though he'd revealed a secret and makes them go slack again. He rolls his shoulders, stretches his neck, growling like a restless panther...and she remembers power, force, violence…

She abruptly sits back and pulls her hands into her lap. It occurs to her that he's never harmless — even prone like this, passive, trusting her with his body. If something provoked him, inside or out, he could turn on a dime, overpower her as he has so many times…

He's watching her with half-lidded eyes and an unsettling heat that makes her flush...and she realizes like a betrayal how aroused she is. More than aroused — she's wet, ready for him. She knows him intimately now how he can make her feel, what he can do to her body...how she's essentially defenseless against him. But she banishes that awareness to the compartment alongside  _sensual touching_  and regulates her breathing because it's  _wrong_  to feel that way. It's twisted. A time will come when she'll need to analyze and process the events of this godforsaken room, her role in them, and how utterly she's been turned inside-out…but now is not that time.

The bed sheet is firmly in place around his hips, so she surveys his torso, deciding where to touch and do no harm. Ignoring his gaze on her, she's struck once again by his physical beauty — the long, lean, sculpted shape of him, the soft, liquid quality of his skin — but it's just a body, she reminds herself dispassionately, and when she returns her hands to him, he closes his eyes with a smug curl of his lips as though she'd obeyed a silent command. She'll let him believe what he wants.

She gently massages the slopes of his shoulders, glides over the hard ridge of his collar bones, noticing, then quickly dismissing, how small her hands seem on the warm expanse of him. She's drawn to the hollow at the base of his throat and lingers there, feeling his pulse thrum steadily beneath her thumb, when she's caught by an ugly, faded scar high on his chest, just inside his left shoulder. It healed poorly, feels ragged when she touches it.

"Nora Gannon," he answers her unasked question. "Scissors. Had it coming. Doesn't deserve a kiss."

She says nothing, moves away from the injury and as she lightly cards through the hair on his chest, she absently brushes his nipples. On guard for any distress, she notes his shivery spasm, his quick hiss…but it's not anxiety or pain. It's a shock of pleasure. He made the same sound when he moved inside her — she remembers it vividly, can't help but be affected, longs to hear it again. So she places that longing in the compartment alongside  _sensual touching_  and  _arousal_  and resolves to proceed clinically, non-provocatively, to avoid sensitive areas. With flat palms and medium pressure, she moves over his pectoral muscles and rib cage like she's smoothing wrinkles from a tablecloth.

He shifts restlessly and makes dissatisfied noises, but she ignores him. Finally he grumbles, "Do it the other way."

She takes a moment to check in. "Everything okay so far?"

"No problems."

It's true. There's been no agitation, no disappearing, no crisis of any kind. She sighs and reluctantly lightens her touch — this is for him, after all. She drifts her fingertips over the soft terrain of his skin, the undulations of his ribs, the flat hardness of his sternum, the soft dip of his solar plexus…stroking, soothing, taking nothing for herself. His breathing deepens and low, open-mouthed sighs draw her attention to the micro-expressions playing over his face, the occasional passing shadow as his eyes watch private visions behind closed lids.

When she sweeps over his navel, he gasps and grabs her wrist. She freezes — his eyes are wide, skin going pale.

"Tickles," he says tightly.

"No powering through,  _querido_ ," she reminds him.

"It's okay." He grasps and presses her hand to his chest. His heart is pounding. "I just…," he pauses, swallows hard. He's told her so much already, but each new revelation seems agonizing for him…

"Todd, you don't have to—,"

"No," he squeezes her hand and lets the words come. "When I…when I was a kid I had these dreams where I'd be falling. I was alone and it was cold and dark. Later on I heard the word abyss, and I thought, yeah, that's what it is. An abyss. But they weren't dreams. It's where I went. It's where I go."

"Is that what just happened?" she says, barely breathing…

_A swan dive into the abyss…_

"I felt it, but I didn't go in. It was like standing at the edge of a cliff." He's begun shivering. She splays her fingers over his chest, presses down gently to try and ground him, reminded once again of how utterly ill-equipped she is for any of this. "The thing is, when I do fall, I don't hit bottom. I still don't know where bottom is."

She's unnerved by the dread in his voice, but answers him with the deliberate, reassuring conviction she longs to feel...

"I think you found it today, Todd. You've been so courageous, you've faced so much…I think the worst is over...things will get better now."

He draws and releases a deep, shuddering breath and lets go of her hand. "Yeah, well, I'm not…optimistic."

"Then let me be optimistic for both of us," she says, surprised by a fierce, primal surge of protectiveness, a renewed determination to be what he needs. It courses through her body to her fingertips, and when she lays her hands on him again, his eyes widen briefly, then drift closed as though he feels it and it comforts him, as though hope is possible just because she said so….and he gives himself over to her once more.

She's both terrified and deeply moved by his trust. He's such a far cry from the man he'd been — hidden away, bitterly defensive, locked securely inside the armor of his tailored three-piece suits — that she barely recognizes him. She has to close her eyes on fresh tears as her hands move purposefully over his naked torso...to soothe, to heal, to fill the cracks and repair the wounds with whatever magic there might be in a fiercely loving touch. To be worthy.

And gradually he melts beneath her. Bones and muscle and sinew giving way, perspiration rising despite small shivery releases of tension, and she becomes aware of areas where the texture of his skin feels different...not smooth, but ropey, puckered. She looks down to find a scattering of shiny, long-healed scars, rising and falling with each of his slow breaths. She lingers on a jagged, dark and roundish one on his right side, just below his rib cage.

"Bull—," his voice is husky. He swallows, starts again. "Bullet. Exit wound. Ireland."

She moves to another, similar to the first, but on the left side.

"Bullet. Exit wound. One of Bo-zo's trigger-happy sidekicks."

She finds a clean, narrow line slicing almost vertically down his stomach. Well-tended, well-healed. She traces it slowly.

"Knife," he says. "Cousin Powell Lord the Third."

She realizes there's a hint of pride in this recitation — like he's narrating a football highlight reel rather than a catalog of near-fatal wounds.

"Todd, I can't believe you survived all these," she says, with equal parts horror and wonder.

"Too mean to die. Ask anybody."

She scans lower and notices a dozen or so additional scars surrounding his navel. They're faded, very old, perfectly round, about the size and shape of the lit end of a cigarette. She delicately touches each one in turn...they must be the reason he grabbed her wrist. But he doesn't say a word.

Suppressing anguish, she revisits the bullet scars, reads the tender flesh like braille — a tactile history of violence. These should have killed him, but they managed to heal themselves instead, toughening his hide. So much scar tissue, inside and out...

She traces the knife wound again, shifts down to examine it more closely. It's about two-inches long, pale, with the faintest marks where the stitches had been. She feels drawn, mesmerized, needs to feel it, heal it and she bends, brushes the scar with her lips, tongue slipping out to taste old pain…

He hisses, his body rising like a wave to meet her mouth...

She jerks away, appalled at herself. Her eyes dart anywhere that's not his face and land on the recent bruise in the center of his chest. She's been avoiding it, but now it seems like nothing, and she examines it to distract herself from his hot eyes on her, from the taste of him on her tongue…

"Delgado's bony shoulder," he says thickly.

She huffs a nervous laugh, spans the whorl of purple and yellow with her fingers, presses lightly into the heat. "Still hurts?"

"Deserved it," he murmurs.

_Deserved it…_

He keeps saying that. Relieved that there's something else to latch onto, she shakes off her embarrassment, locks her behavior in the compartment containing  _sensual touching_ and _longing_ , and redirects her attention to Todd.

He's watching her intently.

"Do you think you deserved  _everything_  that's happened to you?" she says.

His face darkens with the familiar, haunted expression that's never more than a blink away. He looks hard at the ceiling and works his jaw, but says simply:

"Those scars aren't gonna taste themselves, Delgado."

She braces a hand on the mattress, straightens her spine and tries to look confused. But he's having none of it. His eyes are penetrating when they meet hers, and she feels, rather than sees, a granting of  _permission_ , like he's unlocking a door that's stood between them. And he's asking her to open it.

"It's okay," he says, low, tentative. "This isn't platonic. Nothing with us was ever platonic, no matter how hard I tried to pretend. But it's your call."

"No, Todd. That's not what this is about." Her compartments are securely locked, barricades firmly in place, and there's no way she'l let him in now.

Yet her hand is still resting on the bruise she made on his chest, and when he covers it with both of his, she feels that he's trembling. "Delgado…I need to know I can… _go there_ , without losing my mind.  _That's_  what this is about." His voice is soft, but it's piercing her to the core, asking her for everything.

 _Asking_ …not demanding, not manipulating, shaming or cajoling. It's entirely up to her whether or not to shoulder this burden…to give him what he thinks he needs and risk driving him right into that abyss of his…

"I can't." She shakes her head, tears coming fast, and says like a confession... "I'm  _terrified_ , Todd."

He lets her go, pushes up onto his elbow, slips his hand into her hair, leans in and kisses her...a sweet, brief touch of his lips. "I'm not," he whispers. "I trust you."

A stab of horror makes her stiffen and jerk away. She can't bear to hear him state it so bluntly, and she finally understands how he must have felt each time she said those very same words to him…knowing how much hideous damage one person can do to another…

"You shouldn't," she says bitterly and wraps her arms around herself. She aches to disappear inside her big fluffy robe and not have to deal with any of this — his insane request, her fear, guilt, conflicting desires, crippling shame, their miserable fucking history...

"What you're  _asking_ —," she starts, but can't go on. Bizarre, razor-wire emotions have severed her from her once-impeccable mind and she can't seem to breathe. She bites her lips and tastes his scar, tightens her arms around herself and realizes she's shaking but can't seem to stop. Her chest it tightening, mouth going dry as the turmoil mounts, spins her in place, deafens her and she has to cover her ears against it but it still roars...and she knows she's losing control...

Until she feels a warm hand gripping her ankle. She's able to look down, to focus on soft, wet eyes the color of moss in a sunlit stream…

"Shhh, hey, stop, Téa.  _Stop_ ," he's pleading. "God, I'm so sorry about all this…this  _shit_." When he sees that she's heard him, he removes his hand and rolls onto his back, throws an arm over his face. "You should go. Forget it. I'll be fine. Just go."

Overwhelmed with gratitude for the out, Téa scrambles away from him to flee…but just as her feet hit the floor, she freezes. Rather, something freezes her, a silent internal command that makes her grip the edge of the bed, fix her attention on the impenetrable snowstorm outside, breathe deeply and rhythmically into the panic until her mind has a chance to re-emerge and take control. Because there are fears to be dealt with or dispelled. Options and ramifications to be weighed. Desires and emotions to be faced... and maybe... if she's brave... barricades and compartments to be dismantled.

But most of all, because she's not a quitter. That's why, although her voice is trembling, there's only one thing she can possibly say to Todd:

"I guess you forgot,  _mi amor_. This is my room."

**_To be continued..._ **


End file.
